Setting a clear vision for your project

I’ve been thinking a lot about politics lately. Maybe not surprising when around half the world’s population in more than 70 countries held national elections in 2024. One thing that struck me is how candidates communicated their vision for the future, and how that can be applied to digital transformation. Afterall, like it or not, there’s a lot of politics in this process. 

This thought is timely, as in our last blog we talked about understanding the starting point on our roadmap, and now we’ll be thinking about the destination and how to communicate that.

You may think this is a well understood step, and in some ways you’re correct. I haven’t done a project in 20 years where the institution hasn’t drawn up a list of project principles or key outcomes. However, I’ve  seen few projects where these were actually considered, or even reviewed, after project initiation.

Often there are 10 – 15 items, all described in long and detailed sentences. I suspect the reason behind this is to try to be all things to all people while being specific enough to be meaningful. 

Step one: sharpen your focus

This is where we can take a page out of the politician’s book. Rishi Sunak had five priorities. Kier Starmer had five missions. Donald Trump, love or hate him, has one overarching goal: to make America great again. These messages are short, easy to remember and reiterated over and over again. Our project principles need to be the same. 

But how do we balance that with a detailed vision to drive the project? 

We fall back on the structures we already have in place. Involve the team that did the analysis of our starting point as they know the current challenges. Support from Change Analysts to facilitate sessions and develop documentation is also a plus.

Next, pull out your capability model. This will give you a framework to develop  the high-level vision, and then drill down into the detail for each capability area.

Now define three and no more than five overarching principles for the project. Articulate them in short sentences, with no ‘ands or’ lists, e.g.

• Improve User Experience
• Provide accurate data that drives business decisions
• Simplify the technical landscape

These should come from the overall university strategy, which the project is helping to advance. 

Step two: dig into the detail

Now you start to drill down. Break down the overarching principles into ones specific to each capability area. Use the same approach with short, clear sentences. 

For example, for Accounts Receivable (AR):

• Increase availability of account information for customers and students
• Improve cash collection forecasting
• Reduce the number of integrations supporting AR

Optionally, you can refine further to the lowest level in the capability model. 

For example, for Student Receivables:

• Improve/provide online account access
• Improve the collections communications
• Develop a single bank integration for online payments and direct debits

Step three: put your vision into action

Once you’ve done this for your project’s focus capabilities, put this work to use:

1. Use higher level principles for clear communication to the broader business
2. Give the project team and core business areas the detail they need for decision making
3. Support change management processes with clear explanation of how changes to systems support the overall strategy
4. As the project progresses, easily evaluate decisions against the project principles 

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of how valuable it is to establish your team structures and capability model as foundational elements of your project. In this case, they are strong tools to help you develop a vision that’s both accessible to the broader community and detailed enough to drive project decision making. 

If you’d like to chat about how to develop your project vision and use it to support decision making and change management, reach out to the Higher Education experts at Inoapps. 

In our next blog, I’ll be looking at what you need to think about when selecting the products and partners that will contribute to your project’s success.