Overcoming Challenges in On-Time, On-Budget eCommerce Launches

4 Challenges of Going Live On-Time and On-Budget

Scope creep is one that often comes up. Organizations will have a plan for what they want to have happen on a project, and then it changes over time. That should just kind of be expected because you learn more about what you want as a project goes on. It's a matter of constantly revisiting what was the original plan and goal around the project, how it's going to make you money, where you're going to see value from it, how it will benefit your customers, and staying focused on that.

Other areas that often cause projects to not go live on-time and on-budget are around product data. So, product data, the quality of product data or lack of quality of product data can really be a hold up for getting an eCommerce site live as well as design decisions. So, often when an organization is looking to build a new eCommerce site, they're looking to update some elements of their design. They may even be going through rebranding process. All of those things can slow down the process of a site build, as often there are many different stakeholders in terms of that decision.

Organizations may not have a clear understanding of how much time they need to dedicate to a project. So they might hire a team to build it for them, but they haven't necessarily allocated the time on their side for the product data prep or testing the site or giving feedback. And their time and schedules can be a part of what holds up the site going live on time. All of those can be things that contribute to sites that don't go live on time.

Planning for an On-Time & On-Budget Project

It's really important when you are planning for a project that you want to have go live within a certain budget or on a certain timeframe, that you have a plan around what skills are going to be necessary for your project, so you understand what team members that you need to pull in, and you're able to define how much time you need from them so that they can plan that time accordingly.

So the process that we at Brilliance will go through on our customer's behalf, is that we'll have a project plan that maps out for different types of resources, what we know we're going to need on a project, how many hours, and then we can allocate time to ensure they have the necessary time on their schedule allocated to work on it. So thinking through all of the different elements of what you're going to need as a part of the project and ensuring that you have t he time available and calendared appropriately.

Another important part of that is defining roles and responsibilities. We use RASCI charts internally at Brilliance, and often we'll discuss them with customers as well to ensure everybody's clear on what their part of the process is. It minimizes confusion, helps us to be more efficient.

Tips for Effective Project Collaboration

In order to actually deliver a project on-time and on-budget, what you want is to ensure everyone is troubleshooting and working together. Coming up with new ideas of how to hit your on-time and on-budget goal. Really brainstorming effectively together around what is the shortest path to get this project done. And that often will come back to thinking about outcomes. What is the customer behavior change that we're looking for at the end of this project?

If you're really focused on the outcomes, and then really invite the team to give feedback, even though software developers and business analysts may be more technically oriented, they're also in the best position to brainstorm around what's the fastest way to get something done that's going to get you to the outcome you desire. You're going to be best equipped to deal with anything that crops up that you didn't expect, if you really have that environment of collaboration.

Which also means you need to have a team you can trust. I'm a big believer in Trust Through Healthy Conflict, which means that we're willing to say things to each other where we might disagree. Having a really good relationship where you can have that kind of back and forth is really a part of effective, healthy collaboration and is also what helps projects to be done on-time and on-budget when we're able to speak truth to each other in a way that really cuts through the noise and helps us to work better as a team.