Charting the path
You know it needs to change. Where do you start?
Deciding that something has to change is usually the easy part. The harder questions are which thing, in what order, at what cost, and what it will ask of people who are already stretched. Making that call is the work here — and then staying while it is carried out.
What it looks like
The hard part is the sequence.
Too many good options
Five things worth doing, budget and attention for two, and no honest basis for ranking them against each other.
Proposals you cannot compare
Three vendors, three different shapes of answer — different scopes, different assumptions, different costs — and no common ground on which to judge them.
A plan nobody owns
A strategy document was produced. It is thorough, it is well argued, and nothing has moved since it landed.
The last one left a mark
A previous project cost more, took longer or delivered less than expected, and the organisation has become wary of starting the next one.
How we work
Four steps, and someone still there for the fourth.
A useful plan should make the next decision easier, not add another document to manage. The four steps are shaped around the decision in front of you rather than around a fixed engagement.
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Understand the real constraint
Not the wish list — the actual limit. Usually it is your people’s time, occasionally it is money, and sometimes it is a system nobody is allowed to touch. The first job is being certain it is the right problem.
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Put the options on the table
Two or three routes, costed and sequenced, with the trade-offs debated rather than buried. Including doing nothing, where that is genuinely one of the options.
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Agree the first move
Something small enough to actually finish and visible enough to matter. At this stage momentum is worth more than completeness.
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Stay for the build
A plan is not much use if you are left to work out the implementation alone. Where you want the build handled, it is handled; where you have a team, they get help through it — enough for the decisions to survive contact with the real world, and then it is theirs to run.
What you end up with
A decision you can defend.
- A ranked plan with the reasoning left visible
- Costs and trade-offs stated before you commit, not after
- A first step small enough to finish this quarter
- Someone still in the room when it gets difficult
Client story
One platform for a programme delivered nationwide.
The Graeme Dingle Foundation has worked with tamariki and rangatahi across New Zealand since 1995, delivering programmes through schools and communities around the country. It had two fairly practical problems to solve. Its IT support arrangement no longer suited the organisation, and the education programme it runs nationally did not have a single platform behind it. I worked through the options with the Foundation, looking at what each approach would cost, how it would affect the people delivering the programmes, and what it would mean to support over time. The Foundation made the final decisions itself, with a clear view of the trade-offs. The platform it chose is now live across the organisation and, importantly, it is affordable enough for a not-for-profit to keep running.
Graeme Dingle Foundation