Research by William Miller when he was at SRI International indicates that the folks who run the most successful change and innovation projects ask a broader range of project questions during the planning stage than their less successful counterparts.
Miller derived four questions in his research. I've expanded that to five questions during the ten years I've used this material because I find it works better for my clients. Here are the questions.
I find that the analogy of planning a project like planning a trip is one that's easy to use. So that's the form the questions take.
This is our current situation. Classic strategic planning uses the acronym SWOT -- Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. So do I.
Strengths and Weaknesses are internal. What do we do well and poorly? When we move to goals, we'll want to build on our strengths and make our weaknesses irrelevant.
Opportunities and Threats are outside the organization and largely outside its control. We want to seize opportunities and neutralize threats.
As we move into the Digital Age we also should look at the current strategic and market situation. There we'll analyze Surface Forces -- essentially the forces that Michael Porter's classic book, Competitive Strategy.
- Who are our customers and what power do they have?
- Who are our suppliers and what power do they have?
- Who are our strategic partners and what power do they have?
- Who are our complementors and what power do they have?
- Besides our competition, who else can meet the same need that our products and services meet?
Because things are changing so rapidly and tumultuously, we have to consider Seismic Forces as well. These are the forces that change the landscape. Analyze how they may change your playing field in the future.
- Legislation and Regulation
- Demographics and Social Change
- Technology
Right now, you may be thinking, "Wow, this is a lot of work for just a website!" It is. And it would be too much if this were just another brochure. But the public website is usually the first step on the trail of E-business. E-business means massive change, cultural change for your business.
Indeed, we're finding that the major benefits of e-business initiatives are that they offer you the opportunity to re-shape the business in new and more profitable form.
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These are our main goals. For business projects, these should be business goals. There are three basic kinds of business goals.
- We can seek to increase revenue.
- We can seek to decrease expenses.
- We can seek to make things work better.
To be effective, goals should be SMART -- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Trackable.
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This is the process question. What will we do and in what sequence? What resources will we need?
I suggest that you build your project plan with lots of milestones and that you tie payments to your consultants and contractors to achievement of specific milestones.
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You will need a project team. I suggest a maximum of 10-12 folks. You should include
- Technical expertise (in-house and contractor/consultant)
- Operational expertise
- Political expertise (if there's no clout, this becomes an exercise in futility)
In addition to your own people, you may need some outside folks involved in this team.
- A strategy consultant for strategy development
- A technical contractor for page design, coding, database work, etc.
Click here for more on the Project Team.
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This should be part of the assignment for all your team members.
Spend time on the web looking at all of your competition, suppliers, customers and other industry players. Find what you like and don't like about their sites.
It's also a good idea for folks to spend time researching and buying on the web. This will give everyone clear ideas of what works and what doesn't that will carry over to the project itself.
