The Early Warning Report™
Issue # 40 | An example of Failure to Manage Organizational Change
EARLY WARNING SIGN
Technical milestones are progressing as planned while training, readiness, user confidence, or business preparation is visibly lagging behind.
This is one of the more deceptive warning signs because traditional project reporting can remain positive. Scope is being delivered. Schedule milestones are being met. The solution is approaching completion.
Meanwhile, the organization may not be ready to use it.
The gap between “the solution is ready” and “the organization is ready” can grow quietly until go-live makes it impossible to ignore.
WHAT IT USUALLY MEANS
The project may be measuring delivery progress more closely than adoption readiness and business preparedness.
This often reflects a delivery-focused definition of success, where change activities are treated as secondary rather than integrated into the project lifecycle. Readiness therefore advances at a different pace from design, testing, and deployment.
WHY IT MATTERS
A green delivery status can create a false sense of security when the organization is not prepared to operate differently.
Go-live may expose gaps in training, confidence, ownership, processes, and support. Users can revert to familiar practices, workarounds can emerge, and the expected benefits may fail to materialize even though the project technically delivered what it promised.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU SEE THIS WARNING
Review delivery and readiness indicators together and examine whether the organization is demonstrating the level of preparedness expected for the upcoming milestone.
Bring readiness into the same review as delivery progress and identify the specific gaps that could prevent the organization from operating effectively at the next milestone.
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REFLECTION
If your project were technically complete today, what evidence would show that the organization is actually ready to work differently tomorrow?
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Until next week, keep watching for the warning signs.
— Andrew J Putnam, Author of Stop Project Killers