Ask a charity why its last website or system did not land, and you will usually hear about the technology: the platform was wrong, the budget ran out, the agency did not understand them. Those things are real. But they are rarely the reason.
The reason, more often, is that nobody could make a decision stick. [confirm — this article is placeholder copy for the template; Ross to write.]
The problem hides upstream
By the time a project reaches build, the important choices have already been made or avoided: who the thing is for, what it needs to do, what will be cut. When those are fudged, no amount of good engineering rescues them.
Discovery is not a phase you buy to be polite. It is where the decisions that would otherwise sink the project get made in the open.
This is why we spend more time there than most. [confirm.]
What good looks like
A digital-ready organisation is not one with the newest tools. It is one that can say who a piece of work is for, agree what success means, and hold that line when the inevitable pressure to add just one more thing arrives.
- Someone owns the decision, not just the project.
- The people who will use the thing are in the room early.
- What you are not doing is written down, on purpose.
None of that requires a bigger budget. It requires the harder, cheaper work of deciding well. [confirm.]