If you are into innovation, you appreciate that every cutting-edge project started as an experiment. But in today’s disruptive and uncertain market, what does it take to prove your business will justify its claims to your head of department?
How will you ensure that the business and your digital ecosystem will get its value soon?
Prove The Concept
It is often perceived that a different toolset and strategy is needed to play in fields of existing solutions vs playing at the edge of the technology. It can be argued that Proof of Concept (PoC) projects and prototyping suite the first scenario of established systems; and for the latter scenario, experimentation is required to build confidence in a team for executing innovative new technology.
But are these two scenarios really that different? With an innovation-oriented focus, your idea can be realised by utilising a culture of constant, iterative experimentation. This is where you are simultaneously building, testing and exploring potential routes that are leading to a tangible, effective outcome.
Test Your Hypothesis
All of this means that your experiments will help you bring the pain of failure forward or as it’s called “to shift left”. With testing your hypothesis, essentially you are testing its effectiveness and ticking boxes even before the bosses commit to it.
Years of experience in enterprise organisations and solutions proved that embracing agile to its fullest, or going all the way in with the “Continuous Improvements” principles would be a challenge to some senior executives who are so rightly only worrying about the ROI.
It’s harder to convince a C-Level to fund a stream of continuous prototypes that may or may not end up being used. Instead, it will be much more palatable to absorb the cost of a relatively smaller project with the sole purpose of proving a new technology or new feature and its effectiveness in providing value to the business.
An Effective PoC
The smartest way of going about a prototype and a PoC is to find the sweet spot in your ecosystem in which this PoC can grow into. You don’t want to get rid of the work and effort that has already gone into producing this business case even before starting the work on your PoC.
Therefore, your PoC should tick a few boxes. It must be:
- Relatively small in project size and the impact it has on team availability, budget, etc.
- Relatively short duration
- Important enough. It does not need to be the most risky and high profile feature that has been burning on every single PowerPoint for the past 3 years. It does however need to have a meaningful impact on the future of how you do business.
- And finally, it should have relatively high business sponsorship in that it’s palatable to the taste of senior executives to buy into its potential and promises.
Embrace Your Data
Get your numbers and data right before you start with defining your PoC and your business case for this experimentation. This will help you land on that sweet spot where you can prove your idea, and at the same time build tangible products that genuinely find their way into your solution rather than being known as “ah… just another experiment!”.