She Writes Change

Customer journey mapping, be it internal of external customers, is more than a fully CX exercise. It's an excellent project planning tool that spots problems before a line of code is even written. 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 Map out every touchpoint your customer will have with what you're building. Do this upfront, before you've committed budget. This will let you see and structure processes and features early on, making sure you also spot issues that could blindside you after l

The team, the sponsors, and the stakeholder are all there. Scope, goals, and timelines are aligned. But the most critical voice is missing: the end-user.  Not the internal client. Not the budget holder. But the person who really matters, whose life or work we are supposed to be improving. When the customer isn't represented from day one, we risk delivering a project that's on time, on budget, BUT isn't fit for purpose.

Post-Mortems or Lessons Learned are useful if run properly, of course, BUT they won't save your project. We've normalised learning lessons after delivery, after the damage, after the failure. But what if there was a better way?

Stop asking for "Lessons Learned". Start asking for "Lessons Applied". How many times have you sat in a post project meeting review, listing out all the "Lessons Learned", only see them filed away in a document that's never read again?

Launching a new digital product across 12,000 retail locations taught me that scale isn't about size, it's about psychology. You can't just double the resources for double the locations. The real challenges are human. Here's what I learnt about scale:

So when I talk about the business risk of siloed delivery, I'm talking from real experience. And I've seen it in so many other places too. Disconnected projects undermine what could be powerful business outcomes, it puts pressure on people already overloaded with change.

Every team has a strategy deck. Every board signs off on ambitious goals. You have a beautiful Portfolio of projects. But you aren't delivering.

The difference between strategy and success is delivery. Without it, every brilliant idea remains just that - an idea. Brilliant ideas don't deliver outcomes, unfortunately. It's project management that ultimately makes those ideas a reality.