The team had a clear picture of what the customer needed to succeed and designed an approach to deliver it. Each of the functions contributed their own plans that would have to come together to deliver the solution, prepare customer-facing teams, launch to the market, and enable the sales team.

Outside this project, the steering committee developed a commitment to including AI in future work.

During the side-by-side review of all the plans together, it became clear that AI was not part of the technical solution. This shocked the sponsor, who expected to embed AI as part of the long-term strategy. The immediate outcomes didn’t need AI, so the team planned without it.

This is a work design problem.

Both sides were right

A clear view of the customer desired outcome gives a clear definition of done. The technical team did the right and efficient thing by leaving out any technology that is not necessary to the solution.

The work also must serve the long-term strategy for business viability. To the sponsor, it was obvious that AI would be part of the technical solution.

The strategy was missing from the requirements

The people who judge the work weren’t present when the requirements were drafted. Here the sponsor was present, and the strategy he was judging by wasn’t.

If this gap hadn’t been identified, the delivered work would have hit the customer outcome and failed the review at project close. It would be easy to think that either the sponsor changed the goal or the team had failed to listen.

Include strategic direction before the plans are written

Leaders

Before teams plan their work, write down the larger objectives the work must serve beyond immediate customer requirements. Technology choices, strategic direction, and commitments made to stakeholders need to spread beyond the boardroom to the teams that do the work. Find ways to share strategic objectives and commitments when the projects are started.

Then, read team plans for what is missing as well as problems with what is stated.

Contributors

When you plan, ask the sponsors, “Besides the customer outcome, what does this work have to serve?”

For this team, catching the miss at design time before anything was built allowed them to pull in additional services without completely starting from scratch. They didn’t have to tear out anything already constructed.

If you want to see where your work is exposed because of missing requirements, the diagnostic takes 10 minutes: https://amykennedyleadership.com/choose-your-diagnostic/