DX - a modern-day fairy tale

Once upon a time in a land not far from here was an employee who dreamed of a better future. He wished for a shiny new tool where he could access all the organisation’s data and show the status of their many projects. The employee toiled day and night building his dream. Finally, the shiny new tool was finished and it was beautiful. He called it ‘The Dashboard’ and the employee was heralded a hero!

But when the organisation looked closely at the dashboard there were cries of confusion – “the numbers are wrong!” “the spend isn’t right!” “my project isn’t delayed!”. The other employees were angry that their projects were being misrepresented. The dashboard was quickly turned off and the employee was never heard of again.

Sadly, fairy tales like this are all too common in our organisations. The dashboard project failed because it was imbalanced - the employee focussed solely on the tool and gave little thought to the people, processes, and culture in which it was embedded. The other employees weren’t updating the source data – some didn’t know how; some saw no point. And some teams used the data for different purposes - they had different definitions and reporting cadences. So, while the dashboard was technically perfect, it was feeding from imperfect data and was not designed for specific user needs.

Why digital transformations fail

BCG reports significant failure rates in large-scale technology-driven projects - 70% of companies failed to deliver fully on timeline, budget, and scope (1). Forbes attributes these failures not just to technology selection or poor project management, but to a fundamental failure to engage stakeholders and consider the cultural context (2).

Successful transformation is a factor of people, culture, and technology.

In our experience, there are some critical non-technical factors which drive successful transformation projects.

The non-technical drivers of transformation success

There is broad buy-in and executive support

Successful transformation projects require engagement across domains and divisions. They cannot be seen as an isolated ‘IT project’ but a cross-domain initiative tied to strategy and investment cycles.

There is a clear business outcome

When a project focuses solely on the technology and not a business outcome you are heading for trouble. The act of installing a new technology is not an outcome. Realising business benefits, mitigating risks, creating savings, insights, or efficiencies are all worthy outcomes. Outcomes can only be achieved when we are clear about the business problems we are trying to solve; when we understand the contexts, barriers, and realities within the environment; when we consider the people who will use and benefit from the outcome; and when we use technology as an enabler.

Business users are engaged from the beginning

A four-year study of major analytic initiatives in large companies reported that ‘business adoption’ was the most significant challenge to success (3). The technical solution was implemented, but without adoption by the business, it had no measurable impact on practice or outcomes.

Successful projects require greater levels of business engagement than a cursory requirement gathering process at project kick-off. Without genuine and sustained engagement across the organisation, the excitement of a new project is quickly replaced by the next shiny new object.

The transformation is designed for people

One school of thought suggests you should prepare people for technology changes, through communications, training, and change management practices. This thinking is not wrong. But the opposing school of thought suggests you prepare the technology for the people. You build technical solutions with the users at the centre; you build it ‘for’ users and ‘with’ users. The technology adapts to the user, not the other way around. This user-centric approach ensures we build the ‘right’ products and experiences and helps speed business and user adoption.

The transformation is incremental

True transformation changes your ways of working, your operating environments, your processes, and the types of people you need inside your business. These are not small endeavours, and we should not expect organisations to simply transform overnight.

Sustainable change is incremental, determined by the appetite and tolerance of your people for change. Remember, just because you build it, does not mean the people will come. The ‘big bang’ waterfall approaches of the past just don’t work for large-scale transformation. We cannot plan and predict everything. Small changes in organisations can have surprising ripple effects, impacting practice in ways we may or may not have predicted. A more agile approach, able to flex and adapt to the changing environment, is a critical element of successful transformation.

Technology matters but isn’t everything

We’re not saying that the technology is not important, just that it is not the only factor in a successful transformation. Technology exists within a business context, driven by people, and impacted by organisational culture.

References

1. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/most-large-scale-tech-programs-fail-how-to-succeed

2. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2025/06/23/20-tech-leaders-share-lessons-learned-from-failed-initiatives

3. https://hbr.org/2016/08/the-reason-so-many-analytics-efforts-fall-short