gaurang.dev

Congratulations you’ve just been assigned to lead a large initiative which is ambiguous and potentially spans across multiple teams / orgs. How do you approach this initiative? What are the steps you take? How do you structure this for success? The checklist below tries to set up a framework on how you should approach the problem. We’re going to leverage the MEDDPICC framework, this is generally used in enterprise sales and if you squint hard enough you will start seeing similarities with what you are trying to do and the sales process. This flow isn’t necessarily new and you might already be doing some/most of these steps as part of creating the plan.

Checklist

• Identify and implicate pain.

  no pain = no problem = no urgency = no exec sponsor = no budget

  sometimes the fact you have been assigned to this project might be because this step has been accomplished; but always identify the reason why this is important for you to do now.

• make sure pain is real and needs to be solved with urgency i.e. has high priority.
• quantify the pain (reiterating the point above, but with data).
• identify economic buyer, decision process & decision criteria. They are all related and a certain economic buyer might mean you have to use a certain process and criteria.
• identify a champion
• map customers (champion) needs, goals and challenges into quantifiable metrics that you are improving. How does this map to the pain?
• create a plan and map to business objectives.
  • calculate Return-on-Investment, resources required, etc
  • potentially create proof of concept
• get champion to talk about why this plan is essential in achieving the orgs business objectives
• follow through with the decision process
• get stakeholders to agree
• get economic buyer to agree
• follow through the paper process if any
• Finally, get the work done!

Framework Reference

M | Metrics

What are we improving? Potentially how we measure success, value you are providing!

Mold customers needs, goals and challenges into quantifiable metrics that you can improve.

Early stages of engagement it would be hard to call out all the metrics you’d like to improve Can we show improvements of similar metrics in other scenarios? Will act as social proof

E | Economic Buyer

Who’s eventually paying for this? Final say on if the project is going through regardless of what other decision makers have said. Focused on business outcomes, $$$ saved or earned

D | Decision Criteria

Rubric used to make the decision

Technical Provides enough value, interfaces are aligned, infrastructure, migration, etc

Economic does RoI make sense? resources being consumed?

Relationship does the customer want to work with you? are you aligned with their long term roadmap? have you worked with and successfully delivered things for adjacent orgs?

D | Decision Process

Validation Check highest priority requirements against decision criteria rubric

Approval Work with stakeholders to get approvals, lean on your champions to get internal alignment.

P | Paper Process

What are the artifacts / actions that need to be created / completed? Sometimes this might be rolled into the step above.

I | Implicate Pain

Pain = Problem for the org that needs to be solved NOW!

no pain = no problem = no urgency = no exec sponsor = no budget = no movement

C | Champion

Influence, need champions with credibility that can influence internal stakeholders (vested interest, win-win situation). your proposal affects them positively (solves a major pain point) and it's in their interest to get folks to come onboard.

C | Competition

Any initiatives that are in vying for the same resources and budget. Why should the economic buyer spend resources on solving this specific problem vs something else?

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