Behaviour is a critical factor in business process
The keys to a successful software project are:
- New technology
- New measures
- New behaviours
Without each of these elements the benefits of adopting a new software solution won’t be fully realised.
People (i.e. human beings) are a critical part of any business process. If your current process is inefficient or has limitations, then people in the process will develop work-arounds and behaviours that are necessary to get their work done.
Changing the software to remove the technical limitations won’t deliver all the benefits you wanted because people form part of the total process. People will generally behave as they did before the changes were made, especially if their behaviours have been established over a period of years.
You will only fully realise the benefits from the project when people’s behaviours have changed to adjust for any new technology.
How do you change people’s behaviours?
People will behave based on how you measure them. So, in order to get them to behave differently you need to measure them differently. Defining new measures that drive desired behaviour is key to success in any project.
Before any of the technical design begins, identifying what you need done differently, how people should behave, and the measures you need to ensure they behave that way, are the critical first steps.
These are the simple steps we follow with each new project:
Start with the end in mind
- Define business rules and the ways of working the new solution should follow
- Define appropriate measures (KPIs) to track adherence to the rules
- Get historical data and check how well what is currently happening aligns with the desired new ways of working
- Identify inconsistencies between the objectives and current behaviors
- Try to identify why those inconsistencies exist today
- Challenge the objectives and ensure they are truly appropriate and achievable
Identify the limitations and define the appropriate way to resolve them
- From the process above you should be able to identify undesired behaviours and the limitations causing them
- Don’t fall into the trap of trying to solve the symptoms
- Define appropriate measures that will encourage the required behaviors (Measurements can encourage good and bad behaviours. Make sure you’re measuring the right things in the right way to encourage good behavior)
- Make sure the changes will benefit the business as a whole
- Identify functionality the technical solution needs in order to remove the limitations, and to allow you to track the new measurements
Once all this is done, then you can start to design the new technical solution. With the right ground work done up front we often find that changes don’t need to be as radical as you first thought.
See our article "A Considered Approach" for more details.
We have also found that a successful project will depend on:
- Having well defined, realistic and measurable objectives
- Keeping things simple
- Keeping the "end goal"in mind whilst embarking on a "continuous improvement" journey
- Getting end-user to "buy into" the project
- Empowering the project team to make change
- Ensuring the work environment fosters change
- Providing access to real data as soon as possible