Two Smart Strategies for When Timeline and Budget Don’t Line Up with Project Deliverables

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Jim Darrin

Delivery Challenges Blog Series

Every technology project starts with an outcome—a business goal that needs to be achieved. But to achieve that goal, you need to define a set of deliverables, establish a timeline, and determine a budget. Rarely do the timeline and budget line up with the work that needs to be done. There are seldom enough dollars to put the number of people on the project necessary to bring the deliverables to life within the timeline. This is often because of how challenging it is to fully scope a project up front. No matter how thorough you are, new requirements come to light, resulting in scope creep.

Many companies will lean into project management to make everything come together. Smart—a solid PMO practice is the foundation on which all successful technology projects are built.

But you can’t always project manage your way out of this type of problem. That said, there are some things you can do.

Two Key Approaches to Use When Time and Budget are Out of Sync with Project Scope

One of the most complex technology consulting programs I’ve worked on was for a new company in the healthcare space. The budget was a swag from an investor’s presentation deck and was completely out of alignment with the six-month timeline for standing up ERP manufacturing system, provider and patient registration and management portals, and an ecommerce app. Rescoping the project wasn’t an option—if every compliance parameter wasn’t met within the given timeframe, the client would have to wait an entire year to reapply with the organization that had program oversight. In the end, we met the timeline, stayed on budget, and our client was awarded the contract they were after.

We used two key approaches to make it happen. First, we brought all the right stakeholders to the table early to develop standard operating procedures (SOPs). And second, we used those SOPs, as well as compliance guidelines, to build and validate wireframes before standing up MVPs. Then we validated those before coding the actual apps.

Engage the Hive Mind

At the beginning of the initiative, we brought all the key stakeholders together for a series of workshops—one for each app we had to deliver. Every department that had a say was represented—product, engineering, sales, marketing, manufacturing, and legal. Not only did we have a binder on hand detailing hundreds of pages of compliance regulations, but we also had someone on hand who knew them inside and out. Collectively, we walked through every aspect of each app, developing standard operating procedures, strawmen, and requirements.

This hive mind approach meant we could problem solve, make decisions and come to agreements at speed and minimized our chances of going down the wrong path.

My Take

When timeline and budget aren’t in line with the work that needs to be done, you can’t afford to make mistakes. Get the people who hold the answers to your questions in a room and map out your requirements. At Kopius, we call these JumpStarts, and they may take a few days or a few weeks. Then, continue to check in with the same stakeholders at every critical juncture to validate your work.

“Measure once. Cut twice.”

For me, the project management equivalent of “measure once, cut twice,” is wireframes first, MVP second, coding third. And at each of these stages, you need to bring your stakeholders together to validate your work. For the healthcare project, once we had a thorough list of requirements, our UI/UX developed wireframes that we validated with the same group of stakeholders we initially brought to the table. This allowed us to identify and work through any potential issues up front. Then, once the wireframes were validated, we stood up MVPs for each app so stakeholders could walk through the basics of each process and validate it. Only then did we dive deep into coding all the features and functionality for the first release.

My Take

When timeline and budget aren’t in line with the work that needs to be done, the inclination can be to jump right into coding. A better approach is to double down on validating your path forward through JumpStart workshops and wireframing. This will minimize errors—and added time and costs—in the long run.

Expect the Unexpected

No matter how thorough you are in developing your requirements, there are going to be some “ahas” along the way. You have to expect the unexpected and remain flexible. But being flexible doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. Scope creep can derail a project from both a timeline and budget standpoint. For this project, we managed that by getting everyone to agree to a light phase one for each application, then planned to iterate, releasing new features every two weeks after launch.

Looking Ahead: The GenAI Approach

Like many technology companies, Kopius is actively integrating generative AI (GenAI) into our processes, and I’m working on a set of custom GPTs that I believe can make a difference when time and budget are out of sync with requested deliverables. By entering business and technical requirements into it—maybe even a transcript from a discovery session—and asking it to generate common use cases that serve as starting points for designing application features, we can streamline the work involved in building new apps. The prompt engineering requires a lot of up-front effort, but once that initial lift is done, we’ll be able to use it again and again.

Undoubtedly GenAI will deliver thousands of small efficiencies like this, but it’s only part of the equation. The time / budget / scope challenge is an inherent part of software development, and solving it is always going to take a multi-faceted approach.

JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.

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Setting up a Data Lake is More Achievable Than You Think. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Michael Rounds

The demand for data lakes is growing. Fast.

The data lake market will generate revenues of more than $86 billion by 2032, driven in part by IoT-dependent verticals like manufacturing, healthcare, and retail, according to Polaris Market Research. A data lake is a centralized repository for storing all your raw data, regardless of source, so you can combine it, visualize it, and even query it. It is essential for any organization wanting to take advantage of generative AI, now or in the future. But if you’re planning to implement one—or just want to get your data out of silos and into the cloud—it’s important to get it right.

At Kopius, we have helped a fair number of companies whose first try at setting up a data lake didn’t yield the kind of results they were looking for to get projects back on track. Given that risk, it’s no surprise that we also talk with companies that are wondering if it’s worth it.

The answer is a resounding yes.

When properly implemented, putting your data in a data lake or similar environment will enable you to better meet customer needs, solve business problems, get products to market faster, more closely manage your supply chain, and even unearth insights about your business that a human might not even be able to see.

And setting one up doesn’t have to be a long, arduous journey—think of it as more of a quick trip.

Data Lakes Deliver Strategic Advantages: Insights at Speed

Whether you’re moving your data from an internal SQL or other server to Cloud or already have your data in one or more disparate cloud applications, putting all that raw data into a data lake has strategic advantages. Chief among them, and the one that is top of mind for many organizations, is that it is an essential first step in preparing yourself to take advantage of generative AI, (GenAI), which requires raw data in a modern environment.

Another big advantage of data lakes is simply speed. Once all your data is in a data lake, you can set up pipelines to ingest and structure it. You don’t have to go through the tedious process of standardizing or normalizing it to build dashboards or reports or do whatever you need to do. It’s a much faster process than your old SQL server or whatever solution you’re using now. For example, a global healthcare consulting and services company we worked with spent months coding a pipeline to ingest data they needed for a process that took three to four hours to run. Once we implemented their data lake, we set up a couple of pipelines in just two weeks to support the activities they were already doing, with processing time of just minutes.

As fast as businesses move today, all that speed gives you a competitive advantage.

A Data Lake Isn’t the Endgame

Implementing a data lake isn’t the end game—it’s a starting point. It’s just one of several critical components in an overarching, long-term data strategy. Data must be structured—formatted so you can visualize it, query it, or do whatever it is you need to do. So even though it’s somewhat straightforward to stand up a proof of concept, it’s important to know what your endgame is. You’ll need to have some big picture idea of how you want to use your data, because that informs what solution set is best for you. And the market for solutions is both somewhat nascent and already very complex.Fortunately, at Kopius, we have a process for walking you through all these important considerations to find a point of departure or move you further along the data maturity path, including helping you narrow down what your endgame is. It’s designed to get you on the right path up front, so you get the outcomes you are looking for.

Jumpstart Your Data Lake Initiative with a Proof of Concept

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data, and emerging technologies to build innovative data lake solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.

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Looking Down the Innovation Curve: IoT, Data, and AI

Posted on July 30, 2024 by Jim Darrin

One of the earliest known instances of IoT being used for remote monitoring took place at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. A Coke® vending machine was connected to ARPANET, a forerunner of the Internet, to keep track of how cold the sodas were and whether the machine was full. This notion of collecting data from an end point and sending it to a network to monitor a device is as valid a use case now as it was then. In fact, it’s at the heart of an initiative we work on with the Gates Ventures—monitoring fixed and mobile refrigeration units in remote locations to ensure the vaccines stored in them remain safe to use.

Today, however, IoT is much more than this.

IoT has grown into a massive industry that spans virtually every vertical. In fact, McKinsey estimates that by 2030, the economic potential of IoT could rise as high as $12.5 trillion globally. It plays a critical role in industries as broad ranging as energy management, healthcare, agriculture, and retail. But IoT is only one piece of a much larger data strategy. It’s no longer just about monitoring endpoints and measuring activities. It’s about gaining insight, solving business problems, and driving better outcomes.

Why a Data Strategy Matters

To move from monitoring endpoints to driving outcomes, you must establish a solid, overarching data strategy around all your relevant data sources, including IoT devices. You will need to explore how to combine data from disparate sources, determine where to store it, for instance in a data lake, decide how best to structure it to make it queryable, and address how to visualize it. You will also need to put appropriate data governance and security policies in place.

These decisions will serve as the bedrock on which your ability to use and manage your data in the future will be built. To ensure that it is a strategy that supports long-term business agility, you would be well served by collaborating with an external partner with deep domain expertise in structuring and visualizing data who can help you explore challenges your organization is likely to encounter in the future and how will need to access and use its data to address them.

Developing a data strategy and structuring your data, is not a one-and-done project. It is a journey—you will need to put processes in place to manage your assets over time. Where you are on that journey, essentially your level of data maturity, determines your point of departure. For instance, organizations taking early steps may need a business intelligence solution like PowerBI, while others that are farther along may be ready for a data lake or solution like Snowflake that leverages a type of SQL database better suited to support AI applications.

The Impact of AI on IoT

Looking down the innovation curve, AI in general, and generative AI (GenAI) in particular, will have a significant impact on the IoT ecosystem. AI will enable edge computing, which means data can be stored and used much closer to the actual IoT device, whether it is a component of a smart grid or a robot, so it can autonomously respond in real time to changing environmental conditions. Further, by layering AI and GenAI applications on top of your structured data, you will be able to use natural language to query it to find insights that humans would not ordinarily be able to see.

Increasingly today, and well into the future, IoT, Data, and AI will serve as three-legged stool that organizations can build on to gain deep insight into their business, make data-informed decisions, and ultimately drive better outcomes.

And virtually every industry can benefit from it.

What’s the Next Step on Your IoT, Data, and AI Journey?

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Beyond the Sensor—IoT as a Starting Point for Solving Your Organization’s Most Pressing Tech Challenges

Posted on June 21, 2024 by Jim Darrin

Man in a hard hat reviewing data on a tablet

Across virtually every industry, in healthcare, industrial, retail and other settings, IoT is a go-to way of monitoring everything from user behavior, to equipment to the environment. It can even be used to keep track of what’s happening within our bodies. But the bigger question is why? Why are you monitoring those endpoints, and what problem are you trying to solve? Fundamentally, IoT is about data, and it’s often just a starting point. It is part of a large ecosystem of other data sources and technologies that you can bring to bear to solve your organization’s—and in some cases, the world’s—most pressing challenges.

And in fact, long-term, sustainable solutions often extend beyond technology. People and processes may be at the root of your challenges, and you will need to look beyond the sensor to effect change.

From When to Why: How IoT Brought a People and Practices Issue to the Forefront

Case in point: a leading lumber company’s door manufacturing business was among its most profitable segments. They were looking to increase their return on investment by making their machines more productive. That meant finding ways to make them run faster and reduce idle time. They reached out to Kopius, and as a first step, we worked with them to put sensors on their machines so we could pull data to better understand when they were idle and for how long. It was valuable information, but to increase productivity, we needed to understand why they were idle.

It wasn’t because of mechanical issues. Instead, the answer had to do with the way orders are processed and initiated for manufacturing, which is a people and process issue. The company’s order fulfillment process was largely manual. When an order came in, a physical bill of material was created, then someone walked it over to the area of the facility dedicated to door manufacturing. Often, they were pulled away, distracted by a more time sensitive task or by a coworker. In other cases, materials for the doors would get delivered to the wrong area. So, to solve the problem of humans being prone to error, we recommended a change management process and leveraged automation to support better tracking of materials. The expected impact was a 40% increase in production and $50M increase in annual revenue for the door division.

For this company, the initial request for IoT sensors was just the starting point for long term efficiency, agility, and sustainability. It sparked ongoing discussions that have opened a world of possibilities for what other insights could be gleaned from their data. What kinds of sensors would generate data that would help them predict when their equipment needed servicing? How could they lay a foundation for storing and structuring their data so when the time is right, they can leverage AI to gain insights into their business that humans can’t see?

A Problem-First, Technology Second Approach

This experience underscores my initial point. IoT is just one element of a larger ecosystem of technology, data, and process improvements that can be brought to bear to solve your business challenges. If you stay focused on the why—your underlying business problem—and let that guide your technology approach, you can take your business farther, faster.

JumpStart IoT Success

Innovating technology is crucial, or your business will be left behind. Our expertise in IoT technology and business helps our clients deliver tangible outcomes and accelerate growth. At Kopius, we’ve designed a program to JumpStart your customer, technology, and data success.

Kopius has an expert emerging tech team. We bring this expertise to your JumpStart program and help uncover innovative ideas and technologies supporting your business goals. We bring fresh perspectives while focusing on your current operations to ensure the greatest success.

Partner with Kopius and JumpStart your future success.

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Elevating Customer Experience Through Digital Transformation

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Kopius

With customers having countless options at their fingertips, the importance of delivering seamless customer experiences cannot be overstated. Offering a great product or service is no longer enough. In today’s fast-paced online world, businesses must go above and beyond to ensure each touchpoint in the customer journey is exceptional if they want to stand out from the competition. One key solution that has emerged to help companies stay relevant and meet growing customer expectations is digital transformation. IBM defines digital transformations as a customer-driven, digital-first strategy that uses “AI, automation… and other digital technologies to leverage data and drive intelligent workflows… that drive faster and smarter decision-making.” But why should companies who are looking to improve the customer experience invest in digital transformation? The benefits of shifting to a digital-first business model are plentiful, impacting those both inside and outside of the organization. Let’s delve deeper into how adopting a digital transformation strategy can supercharge the customer experience and benefit your business.

Offer Seamless Omni-Channel Experiences

Meeting and exceeding customer expectations requires delivering a consistent and continuous experience, regardless of which channel they choose to utilize. By integrating mobile applications, social media, websites, and other online platforms, digital transformations allow customers to interact with businesses through their preferred channels. Providing this level of convenience means customers can start their journey on one channel and easily continue to another without skipping a beat.

Deliver Personalization and Customization to Increase Customer Engagement

Research by Accenture showed that 91% of customers preferred brands that offered relevant offers and recommendations. Digital transformations help businesses unlock the power of customer data, by collecting and analyzing vast amounts of information to derive meaningful insights in a matter of seconds. By tapping into advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence, companies can gain valuable knowledge about buying behavior, preferences, and trends. This helps pave the way for targeted promotional campaigns, individualized interactions, and tailored product recommendations, cultivating elevated customer satisfaction.

Decrease Downtime, Increase Efficiency

Inquiries, requests, or the occasional complaint are inevitable, but how your business handles them can be a make or break for your customer. Swift and efficient customer service and support is a must. Digital transformations empower businesses to optimize processes and minimize response times, resulting in expedited customer interactions. Through automation technology, AI-powered chatbots, and self-service options, companies can deliver immediate support around the clock. Thus, customers are able to engage with brands at their desired time and place.

Digitally transforming the customer experience is a necessity for businesses wanting to thrive in the digital era and offer seamless, tailored experiences. Ensuring speed, customization, and convenience across multiple channels leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, driving tangible return on investment (ROI) for your brand. Are you ready to elevate your customer experience to new heights? Contact Kopius so we can create remarkable customer experiences that will drive your goals and revenue forward!

JumpStart Your Digital Transformation

Innovating technology is crucial, or your business will be left behind. Our expertise in technology and business helps our clients deliver tangible outcomes and accelerate growth. At Kopius, we’ve designed a program to JumpStart your customer, technology, and data success.

Partner with Kopius and JumpStart your future success.

Designing for Good: User-Centered Design

Posted on February 2, 2022 by Kopius

We’re talking about user-centered design because ideas succeed when they translate to products, services, and experiences that users love.

So what does “user-centered design” really mean, and why is it so important right now?

To understand user-centered design, look back to the time when digital products didn’t focus on the user experience like they do today. Just 10 years ago, digital products like websites, apps, and software didn’t need to perform on multiple screen sizes or resolutions because devices were mostly standardized. Companies could create a version of their digital product for desktop devices, a distinct version for phones, and possibly another version for tablets. Many companies didn’t address accessibility and they primarily designed digital products for a single operating system. As a result, many users found technology frustrating, hindering, and downright irritating, which hindered adoption.
Kelly La Belle, Designer

A great product is a product people want to use.

Thankfully, companies addressed the user frustration, and the design process for digital products has been evolving to prioritize users ever since.

People value products that are easy to use, simple to set up, and have a logical progression. User-centered design isolates the users’ specific needs down to granular steps, then we design to be aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. To really understand the users, the design process requires user research, which can include user surveys, brainstorming, testing, and more.

There is no single approach to user-centered design. Most digital products have unique experiences that require unique solutions. An investment in a great user experience and user interface design can make the difference between success and failure.

Products that incorporate user-centered design have been proven to:

Cut down on customer service costs. More intuitive workflows result in less customer frustration and fewer service calls.
Increase sales. Customers conduct research before committing to a new product or service so first impressions online are key. A few bad online reviews about your product will result in lost sales. Rather than hire a PR firm to fix your product’s reputation, invest in a great user experience upfront to reduce the cost of sale.
Reduce lawsuits. Companies can be held legally responsible if their digital products aren’t usable for people with disabilities. Having an inaccessible digital product is in the same vein as having an inaccessible storefront. User-centered design will address accessibility as a top priority.

User-centered design is popular because it works. The digital landscape is constantly changing, so keep the user at the center of the change to ensure a great product and strong business.

Contact Kopius to JumpStart Your Success Today

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Designing for Good: Equitable Design

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Kopius

The terms Equity and Equitable Design come up with increasing frequency as businesses are asked to be transparent about efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion by investors, customers, and employees.

Our designers want to make equitable designs for every client, so we have worked to understand what it means to design equitably.

Understanding Equitable Design

To quote Jennifer Wright of Designers Build, “The term equity is often used interchangeably with equality, but it is a fundamentally different concept. Equality is giving everyone the same thing. Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful.”

This does not mean that we design everything to be equal or the same for everyone regardless of their needs. Equitable design also does not mean that we have a diversity checklist for your stock photo library.

“From my perspective, equitable design has three levels of impact: Representational, Experiential, and Cognitive-behavioral,” says Kopius UX Designer, Jacob Lowry. In the context of equitable design, we like to define the three levels of impact like this:

Representational design authentically and positively challenges societal defaults and expectations.
Experiential design focuses on accessibility, beyond WCAG or ADA accessibility to include social, cultural, and technological access. With experiential design, we design for user needs and emotions.
Cognitive-Behavioral design influences how people think and behave. In this case, to use design to help people to think and act in a way that contributes and supports a more equitable society.

Transforming Your Next Project With Equitable Design

Everyone consumes content, and designers are in the unique position of helping create that content. As Christopher Paul discusses in his book Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games: Analyzing Words, Design, and Play, design is a powerful and important societal role – it isn’t isolated.

Most design is built for business needs and for-profit content. However, being driven by profit is not in conflict with equitable design. In fact, there is a mountain of evidence to back up the link between business effectiveness and equitable design. Companies that integrate social responsibility into their operations can expect positive financial returns. These companies also increase sales and prices while reducing employee turnover.

It happens in big and small moments.

Embracing Equitable Design for Inclusive Solutions

Designers can have the ambition for large, systematic change while operating on a niche, local, brand, or worldwide level.

Designer Rie Nørregaard said in “Designing for Humanity,” that designers should shift away from “designing for” to “designing with” by connecting with different people and contexts. When designers step back from their own experiences to connect with the user and their perspective, we can design more equitably. This is especially true for designers that are members of the default norms (white, male, able-bodied, English-speaking, etc.). How do we connect with other user experiences and needs? It can be through interviews, observations, conversations, research, and more. This is informed at Kopius by our user research team, too.

It’s simple to include equitable design in your next project because it doesn’t require a lot of research or professional development (though those can help). Equitable design simply requires a commitment to look outside of a limited worldview to find the right way to approach solutions for a more diverse set of users.

Contact Kopius for Equitable Design Solutions

At Kopius, we’ve designed a program to JumpStart your customer, technology, and data success.

Tailored to your needs, our user-centric approach, tech smarts, and collaboration with your stakeholders equip teams with the skills and mindset needed to:

Identify unmet customer, employee, or business needs
Align on priorities
Rapidly prototype solutions
And, fast-forward success

Gather your best and brightest business-minded individuals and join our experts for a hands-on workshop that encourages innovation and drives new ideas.

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