Remaining aligned with strategy

Here is an example of one of the principles which reflect the characteristics of a successful programme, and as such is more likely to achieve its objectives.

A law enforcement agency with responsibility for vehicle regulation, identified some innovative handheld recognition technology that could be used to scan vehicle registration numbers directly onto a database and accelerate the processing of information and enforcement.

This original technology option was not available for general use from the suppliers, so an alternative technology was used that proved less robust. Staff were resistant to the change, as it threatened their jobs. The technology project overran by three years and costs escalated. Eventually, it went live but with limited capacity and much resistance from users. The hardware and software were unreliable and it took more time to process than the old manual approach.

In the meantime, the organisations strategic focus moved towards intelligence-based enforcement and other initiatives were developed that used a range of information to track vehicles using a rapidly expanding network of roadside cameras.

By the time the original programme was delivered, the information for enforcement was available from other sources. In effect the new capability was already redundant when it went live and it should have been stopped two years earlier. The original programme had lost alignment with the organisations strategy and did not deliver a coherent capability.

source = Managing Successful Programmes