New Technology
From the business (ie non-technical) perspective the introduction of new technology should be a symmetrical process.
The process should include all of the following stages:
- Vision – what the business will achieve through the technology.
- Business Requirements – what the business actually wants to do with the technology.
- Functional Specification – a translation of step 2 into terms describing what the technology needs to do in order to enable the business to do what it needs to do.
- Technical Specification – a translation of step 3 into what specific technology will be used for each element.
- Building – assembling all the software and hardware described in step 4 into a system.
- System Testing – testing that all the software and hardware does what was described in step 3, individually and all together and fixing as necessary.
- User Acceptance Testing – testing that the business can do what was defined in step 2 and fixing as necessary.
- Implementation & Review- implementing then assessing whether the business is achieving what was defined in step 1.
Project cost and time over-runs, failure to acheive expected benefits and general dissatisfaction with new technology are often a result of a failure to fully complete one of these steps.
Ensuring your business is sustainable is much more than being careful about the resources you use. You need to consider if all your processes and systems will work in the real world, with real-world competition, real-world resource constraints and of course real people inventing, manufacturing, delivering and buying your products and services.