WWWWHW - another acronym to add to our growing list... as if we need it.
But I thought I would share this bit of information with you anyway. Since you are here, you are interested in Enterprise 2.0. The fact that you are reading these blog entries means you probably want to find out more about how to run an Enterprise 2.0 project.
Like Bert Sandie said in his post, there have been numerous posts about the ROI in this community and in other places, as well as a discussion kicked off by Andrew McAfee about the usefulness of pilots in Enterprise 2.0. Our own John Mancini said: forget about ROI, nobody needs it in E2.0.
Well I disagree… and that is where WWWWHW comes in. It joins the list of many other useless acronyms, but it carries with it some hard truths you should ask yourself BEFORE starting a project on Enterprise 2.0.
Who – What – When –Where – How – Why (and these are not in any particular order)
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Who– who will be involved, who will run the project, whom is the project for? Is it internal or external facing? Who is expected to participate?
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What– what are you trying to achieve? I don’t need an ROI if whatever I am trying to achieve is of such strategic importance that we do not need to worry about proving beforehand that it is good (financially) for the company.
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When– when will this be done, when is going to go live, when is it going to be critical, when are the user supposed to work with this new way of learning?
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Where– where in the organization is this going to happen? Departmental, Geographic, across business functions, or departments, or limited to a single stack in the organization?
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How– how will be project be run, how will it be managed, how are we going to implement?
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Why– why are we doing this? Is there any good reason, rational or not, for going ahead with this initiative or is this a nice to have, a single persons' technology whim that you are following.
There are probably dozens of variations for the questions above, but frankly if there is no clear answer for each one of them, it is time to find out. No organization I ever worked with or for did something for the heck of it, one did something for the fun of it, but that was an exception. Most enterprises need a good reason, and Enterprise 2.0 is no exception.
If you are embarking on your road down E 2.0, ask these questions, of your own people, of yourself, of the consultants and the business-users. Your mileage may vary, but that does not mean you can afford to ignore these points.
Now if we want to make this more useful, we really need some sample questions and possible answers. I’d love to hear your views.
And as for my view… I actually tend to agree with John about not always needing an ROI. Sometimes, we need an ROI, frankly because we cannot think of any really good reasons to do something ! :-)
#ROI