The Civil Engineering Contractor April 2018 | Page 41

But scaling is frequently
hampered by a combination of
environmental factors that vary
across locations.
Incompatible infrastructure
— such as electricity supplies or
sockets, climatic conditions or
weak content relevance to the
local community — language,
or social environment, are
typical examples of factors that
frustrate replication attempts.
A World Bank report looking
at ICT for development
projects between 2003 and
2010 found a 70% failure
rate in projects aiming to
deliver universal access to
ICT. In the 2000s, India gained
a reputation in this field as
“a graveyard of successful
pilots”, due to this struggle
to replicate ICT project
successes. More recently, city
planners have been discussing
why it is proving so difficult to
replicate the success of “smart
city” solutions across different
locations.
Experience shows that the
accumulated
contextual
differences between locations
renders exact replication across
multiple locations practically
impossible.
It is advisable to learn from
multiple projects in different
contexts. Project planners need
to actively design their own
unique model that is relevant
to their circumstances, while
in the process learning from
the wisdom and experience
of multiple other instances.
Specifically, our research
reveals the importance of
learning from the patterns and
dynamics that are common
across multiple successful
projects.
It is also important to engage
with your stakeholders from the
planning process and invest in
establishing formal and informal
channels to connect different
groups based on genuine
interaction and feedback.
Regular
communication
between stakeholders and
project planners can build
coalitions of shared objectives
and common interest. These
interactions have the added
benefit of generating input to
improve the local relevance of
project plans.
Leaders should focus on
outcomes. As Jeffrey Bradach of
the Bridgespan Group, who has
published, taught and advised
extensively on scaling success
in the non-profit sector, put it,
“The objective is to reproduce
a successful programme’s
results, not to slavishly recreate
every one of its features.” The
desired outcomes must be
context-specific. Furthermore,
there must be mechanisms
to monitor progress toward
those outcomes, and to bring
attention to situations where
there is divergence from them.
This monitoring and continual
realignment makes the project
a living, breathing part of
its context. It ensures local
relevance even as circumstances
and behaviours evolve during
the project’s progress.
This article first appeared in January
2018 in IT-online and is reprinted with
permission. nn
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
About the author
Livingstone Chilwane is the managing director
– Health & Public Service (H&PS) at Accenture
in South Africa. He is responsible for Accenture’s
services to the country’s health care providers,
government, and public service agencies. Apart from
driving profitability, Livingstone is firmly focused
on enhancing H&PS’s penetration of key growth
markets. He believes that growing the group’s non-
traditional revenue streams goes hand-in-hand with
maintaining and enhancing the company’s presence
in existing business areas.
Incompatible infrastructure — such as
electricity supplies or sockets, climatic
conditions, or weak content relevance
to the local community — language, or
social environment, are typical examples of
factors that frustrate replication attempts.
CEC April 2018 - 39