ACT//DO//DELIVER
Completing the implementation
Every type of Digital Transformation might have different tasks that you should undertake as the project comes to an end. For example, a mobile website development is likely to require user acceptance testing, training in the content management system, and a “snagging period” where any errors discovered during use, can be quickly corrected.
Support all staff and users to build their own digital capabilities
How are these digital developments going to affect your staff and users? How do employees experience a technology change? When we upgrade/replace a person’s technology or process, we are asking them to give up something they’ve learned to master. Effectively, they now move from a state of competency with a product to a state of incompetency. Cloud computing services and rapid and iterative development techniques (like agile) are becoming the norm, and mean that staff might be faced with new features to master more frequently. From a staff perspective, it can feel overwhelming. Anxiety and frustration sets in and can last for weeks or months until people feel they have returned to a level of competency again.
Training and support are essential. Set-up maximum-length 10-minute long trainings or learning sessions, and ensure that people take recall quizzes spaced out over 4 weeks. This has a dramatic change in outcome (Memory Decay is a well-documented fact that people forget 80% of what they learn within 2 weeks). You might need support of the SMT to ensure this level of intervention of initial training and recall quizzes with staff is possible. But until the new skills become subconscious habit to staff, and they are competent again, the implementation may fail.
They think its all over…
All projects should have a start and an end, and just as you will have formally agreed to start a project, you should look to formally close down the project once it is launched, and is just part of “normal activity”. The closedown should include:-
- ensuring completion of all financial spend
- completion of a file containing all project documentation (including throwing away anything that is no longer relevant)
- storing and sharing any assets (e.g. photographs, videos, contracts)
- reflection and evaluation
What’s Next?
You have successfully completed The Digital Transformation Approach through the auditing of where you started from, the diagnosis of your needs, the development of a business case, and through the implementation itself. Throughout that process you should have been reflecting and evaluating, and that should continue once the project ends.