Overview

Digital transformation programmes have the potential to give organisations competitive advantage and provide major benefits to employees and stakeholders. However, the majority of these programmes fail to provide the expected results. In this course we’ll look at how successful digital transformation was delivered to major charities and a media company. This course is based on lessons learnt from these demanding programmes.

In this course you’ll learn about the strategies and activities that made the difference between success and failure.

This course is designed to help business stakeholders and IT teams understand that:

• Managing and supporting business change in digital transformation programmes is crucial.
• Agreeing critical success factors with stakeholders at the start of the programme is essential.
• Every digital transformation project is different, and you must view the complete programme holistically.
• Dress rehearsals are the most effective risk mitigation activity a programme can complete. In addition, resistance to change will be decreased and productivity from day one of BAU will be increased.
• The cutover strategy must be agreed upon in the project initiation phase. The cutover approach can impact all aspects of the programme.
• Methodology must be reviewed and enhanced as required. On some digital transformation programmes a hybrid methodology may be required.

Course Objectives

The course aims to:

• Introduce learners to strategies and critical activities that have been proven in successful digital enhancement programmes.
• Illustrate the use of hybrid methodology and explain how this was essential in a business-critical programme with a fixed cutover date.
• Provide information on critical activities that may not be part of the methodology the organisation is using.
• Show the importance of quality assurance.
• Provide guidance on estimating. Going over time and budget is a major risk on digital transformation programmes.
• Show that managing business change and providing support in this area is vital for success.
• Illustrate a proven risk management approach that works on these complex programmes. Explain the vital function of the programme board and how to ensure that it supports the programme.
• Show the importance of the appropriate level of documentation, especially documents that will be used by the support team.
• Highlight the requirement for contingency in areas that may have long lead times or activities that may require multiple phases. Security testing is one example of this.
• Show the importance of preparing and managing a single plan that contains all third- party activities. Please note that the third-party activities may be at the milestone/main activity level. However, it is critical that all dependency information is included in the single plan.
• Illustrate the importance of project initiation. A study completed by a consultancy in London concluded that issues with project initiation were a contributing factor in 80 per cent of project failures.

Who is this course for?

This course is designed for business and IT stakeholders, PMO teams, and project/programme managers.

It will be valuable for PMO teams, IT directors, managers, support teams, quality assurance managers, test teams, super users, data managers, change managers, security teams, or anyone involved in IT digital transformation programmes.

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course you should:

• Understand strategies and critical activities that are critical for successful delivery of digital enhancement programmes.
• Know the benefits of hybrid methodology and when it is appropriate to use it on programmes.
• Understand critical activities that may not be part of standard methodologies and how to include them in your programmes.
• Have an understanding of quality assurance and appreciate that it is not just part of everyone’s role.
• Have increased knowledge on estimating and understand areas that typically require additional contingency. (A study by a university found that most activities take over twice as long as the estimates.)
• Understand key aspects of managing business change and supporting the users.
• Know how to implement a proven risk management approach.
• Understand the vital function of the programme board and how to ensure that it supports the programme.
• Understand the importance of the appropriate level of programme documentation.
• Know how to prepare and manage a single plan that contains all third-party activities.
• Know how to complete professional project initiation.