September 16, 2020

A good start to your Pega project? Start with the business goals and project results

More and more organizations are digitizing and innovating their business operations and processes. To achieve this, they use platforms that make development faster and more accessible, such as the Pega platform. But how exactly do you approach a Pega project? In this blog, Mark Overduin, one of our consultants, explains why you should start with determining business goals and project results.

 

Long-term horizon

The Pega platform is almost never actually used to create a single application or to support one specific process. It is a platform that supports the transformation you want to go through as a company and therefore has a long-term horizon. Before you start a – first – Pega project, it is important to determine the business goals and project results.

Map for control and measurability

You can compare business goals and project results with a map. You can travel well without a map and you will undoubtedly arrive somewhere, but you won’t know in advance when you will arive and certainly not where. Without a map you are adrift. Great for an adventure trip, but very inefficient from a business point of view. By establishing the business goals before you start working on your project, you know where you want to go with the business and what strategy you are following. If you then translate these goals into project results, you will know what the project should deliver to you and how it contributes to the business goals. It provides guidance and ensures that your journey to the destination becomes measurable: are you still on course and are you going to reach your destination within the desired time? This way you can always check whether the project is still in line with what you stand for as an organization.

Help with making choices

Of course, the entire team must be aware of the goals and results. It provides context to what the team is working on and helps in making daily choices. In addition, determining business goals and project results provides the product owner – the most important guardian of the project – with solid handles in prioritizing: which wishes should the team work with and which ones can wait a while?

Keep testing, even after going live

It is often clear that for software projects, and Pega projects in particular, it is important to test the business goals and project results before going live. After all, the client wants to know whether the project actually offers the desired improvement and support. Or, to stay in travel terms, whether you’ve arrived at your desired destination. But even after going live, it is crucial to keep testing the system or application: against the old targets, but also against new targets that appear on the horizon. As soon as a project has been completed, there is a risk that the focus will fade and that, due to changes of the guard, it is no longer entirely clear why you do what you do and why this destination was ever chosen. Should the destination change? That’s possible, but stick to that map of business goals and project results. That’s how you get the furthest.

Want to know more?

We are happy to share our knowledge and experience with the market. In our whitepaper “The seven steps for a good start of your Pega project” we describe which core activities must be carried out to ensure a good start of your Pega project and which points of attention are needed in this. Talk further? Please feel free to contact us. We like to think along with you.

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