The new bill
A new billing system goes live without a hitch. Then a customer’s first bill looks nothing like the last, and she thinks it’s a scam.
IT programmes · IT department
Project vision video.IT project kickoff video.
Four hours of slides at kickoff, and everyone walks out picturing a different system. Then a short story of the finished system, before the build starts.
1:36 · Cartoon · IT department
What the film says
Project kickoff day. A multi-million-dollar system. 5,000 users.
12 months to go-live. All the business stakeholders are here. Four hours, held together with PowerPoint and a 200-page document that not everyone has read, and nearly no one fully understands.
80 slides. Everyone nods, then walks out picturing a different system. Months later, that gap turns up as rework, scope creep, and a steering committee asking why it isn’t what they expected.
Across more than 5,000 IT projects, the large ones ran 45% over budget, and delivered 56% less value than predicted. Research from Oxford on big projects shows the ones that succeed start with the end goal, and work backwards. So that’s where I start.
Before the build begins, I make a project vision video: a short animated story of the finished system. Meet Sam, a year from now. A customer calls.
His whole history is on one screen. Sam fixes it in one call, and the help desk never hears about it. Play it at kickoff.
In three minutes, every stakeholder pictures the same system. I’ve spent over 25 years working with professional software teams and large corporate IT departments. I work with your project manager, programme director or CIO.
I storyboard the user journey and write the script, and you sign off both. One video for the whole project, or one for each department. Start your project with the end in mind.
Message me on LinkedIn.
Want one like this for your project? Every corporate job is different, so I quote each one.
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SAP go-live Monday
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Contact
Start a conversation.Tell me what you need, and when.
A line or two is enough. I’ll come back to you by email.
Prefer LinkedIn? Message Ken McHardie on LinkedIn.