How to Gain Success Through the Pilot Project

Sometimes, project risk assessment, no matter howimplementation satisfies the business requirements of
well it is done, still doesn't provide the necessary levelthe project.
of comfort for stakeholders of upcoming project.Second, if new technology involved, you will get
Especially if this project is large enough and potentiallyproof of technology (PoT) that has not necessary
challenging the thousands of affected customers. Or,affected customers, but brings the assurance that
this can be due to concerns about newestbusiness model is supported by technical feasibility.
technologies, or, due to involving new social or evenThis will be quite different from technical feasibility
sociological factors that were not brought up before.study, because the assessment will be based not on
The best option, in that case, is to break the mainthe outline design or system requirements, but on
project apart and scale the scope down to develop areal performance results in your project environment.
smaller, so called pilot project, that will be much easierAnd the third, pilot project may be and often will be
to handle and complete with success. This small scaledone in production environment, with real users
implementation will be the first part of large project,group, that will stay with you in the bigger rollout and
your first ball to play, and, with proper planning, yourwill become your valuable band of supporters and
chance to reach the same goals and outcome as apriceless source of user feedback, suggestions and
big project, but with less risks impact and withlessons learned.
shorter deadline.Basically, the pilot project will give you much more
The advantages of the pilot approach are oftencorrect estimates, than any other studies, whether
worth to try.the new implementation will perform adequately or
First of all, you will get the proof of concept (PoC)not. And if you scale the scope down, the impact of
for business model to be implemented during therisk factors is also scaled down and often, so
project and gain confidence that main idea will workdrastically, that you can easy get buy-in from
again in the large scale. It will involve a relatively smallstakeholders and champions to go ahead. They also
number of customers and you will have chance easilywill love availability to get results sooner, as pilot will
to establish and prove whether the deployment orbe not so long as the main part.