Now, I have sat in a great many programme reviews over the years, and they have tended to open the same way. A status report goes up on the screen, with most of it green. There is a patch of amber around data migration and a note about a vendor dependency. Everyone nods and the meeting moves on. Three months later the same programme is asking for more money and a new go-live date.

So, what changed in those three months? Usually nothing. The problems were actually always there all along. The problem was the reporting was never built to show them.

After a long career delivering IT change for corporates and government departments, I have come to a firm view that technology is rarely what brings a transformation down. Platforms mostly work and vendors mostly deliver what the contract says. The trouble sits in everything wrapped around the technology, and it shows up in remarkably consistent ways.

The business case goes in the drawer

Every programme starts with a business case. It promises lower cost, faster service, reduced risk, sometimes all three. It gets approved, and in too many organisations nobody reads it again as it disappears into the bottom drawer.

From that point the programme is measured on time and budget. Both matter, but they measure activity. I have seen programmes land on the day and on budget while delivering very little of what the board was promised, because the benefits had no owner, no baseline and no date. A benefit that nobody in the business is accountable for is a hope.

Governance that watches and does not decide

A key team are the steering committees, which are everywhere. Useful ones are much rarer though. The familiar pattern is a monthly meeting of senior people who receive a thick pack two days beforehand, sit through a presentation and leave without making a single decision.

Governance exists to make decisions quickly and at the right level. Who can approve a scope change? Who can release contingency? Who can stop the programme? When those answers are unclear, decisions drift upwards or sideways and the delivery team waits. The delay then gets recorded as a delivery problem, when it was a governance problem from the start.

Change management turns up late

I still see change management treated as communications and training, pencilled in for the last few weeks before go-live. By then the design is locked and the people who will use the new system are being told about it instead of being asked.

People rarely resist change because they are difficult. They resist because nobody has explained what it means for their Tuesday morning. Which screens will they use? Which approvals move? Which parts of the job disappear, and what replaces them? Adoption is where benefits are won or lost, and it needs attention from the first week of the programme.

Three disciplines, three plans

This is the issue I feel most strongly about. Many organisations have a capable PMO, a change team and an assurance function. Each has its own method, its own strong individuals, its own plan and its own reporting, and each does a decent job on its own terms. The programme still struggles, because the three never properly meet and align.

The project plan carries a go-live date the change team privately believes is unrealistic. The Assurance team raises a finding that never makes it into the schedule. The steering committee sees three versions of the truth and has to guess which one to believe. Nobody is being careless, it just that the structure makes it almost impossible to see the whole picture.

Too much change, all at once

There is a newer pressure too. Most organisations I speak with are running more change than their people can absorb, and AI initiatives are now being layered on top of portfolios that were already full. The same subject matter experts are wanted by five projects. The same frontline teams are being retrained for the third time in a year. Programmes are planned as if each one has the business to itself, and none of them do.

What we do differently

These are the problems our Transformation service at Bushey was built to address, and they are the reason we developed AssureChange®, our transformation delivery framework. It brings project management, change management and governance together into a single way of working, with one aim sitting above all of it – delivering the business benefits the organisation signed up for.

In practice that changes a few things. Benefits are defined, baselined and given a named owner in the business before delivery starts, and they are tracked through go-live and beyond it. Governance is designed around the decisions the programme will need, so the right people are making the right calls at the right time. Change work starts at the beginning, alongside design, so the people affected help shape the outcome. And the sponsor gets one honest view of the programme, where delivery progress, business readiness and risk are reported together.

It is disciplined, practical work, and it is what separates a programme that goes live from one that pays back.

Questions worth asking this week

If you are sponsoring or running a transformation right now, I would put five questions to your team.

Who owns each benefit in the business case, by name?

When was the business case last opened?

What did your steering committee decide at its last meeting?

When did your end users first get a say in the design?

And if you asked your project manager, your change lead and your assurance lead for the real go-live date, would you get the same answer three times?

If any of those are uncomfortable, you are in good company. They are uncomfortable in most organisations, and every one of them is fixable, provided someone asks early enough.

If you would like to talk through where your programme stands, I am always happy to have that conversation. Get in touch with me or the team at Bushey and we will help you find out what your status report has been leaving out.

Most IT transformations do not fail on technology – they fail because the business case is forgotten, governance watches without deciding, change management arrives too late, and project, change and assurance teams work from separate plans. Bushey’s AssureChange® framework brings project management, change management and governance together into one way of working, so programmes deliver the business benefits the organisation signed up for.

#DigitalTransformation #ChangeManagement #ProjectManagement #ITGovernance #AssureChange