Are There Alternatives to DeliverMyStrategy?
Clients should consider all their options before committing to any change – let alone something as comprehensive as DeliverMyStrategy. Other solutions for complex project delivery problems are often manual, or use other business systems in roles they weren’t designed for. As a new type of system DeliverMyStrategy has not yet seen any direct competitors – that’s why we’ve developed it!
Caravel Group sells results – not just software, and your organisation needs to deliver projects, strategies and other initiatives reliably; not just another system to track your failures. DeliverMyStrategy provides you the same visibility of projects that operational systems do for your business-as-usual operations – but works very differently.
“DeliverMyStrategy fills the gap between operational business systems and the CEO.”
Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP Systems
Designed for operational control of the business-as-usual operations of complex organisations, these systems are very effective at integrating data across the organisation. As operational tools, they help run every aspect of the business, but are generally poorly designed for change, uncertainty, or ambiguous requirements. Focused on the ‘things’ in the organisation, the often overlook the human element, and provide only rudimentary tools for managing your people – and in the face of change, this is always the most important dimension.
DeliverMyStrategy is designed to work with your ERP system, providing a similar level of support for the CEO and leadership team to that which the ERP system provides to line management – at far less cost but with similarly comprehensive impact.
Portfolio and Project Management – PPM Systems
A good PPM tool will provide an ideal platform for DeliverMyStrategy, coordinating the mass of information and detail necessary to manage a complex portfolio of projects. These tools are very effective when used as ‘an ERP for projects,’ but tend to break down in the face of uncertainty – at early stages of ideation and project development, and at the leadership level where flexibility, creativity and focus are more important than details.
DeliverMyStrategy is also designed to work with PPM systems by abstracting a comprehensive view of only the critical elements that are necessary for senior management attention. This uncluttered view highlights issues the PPM system cannot see – like the misalignment of suppliers’ goals with those of your project – and allows those to be addressed effectively, outside of the framework that manages the detail of tasks, resources and completion status.
DIY and ‘Home-Grown’ Software
The DeliverMyStrategy software is certainly far less complex than many systems in the market today – that’s what makes it so robust. But the key to its effectiveness is how it manages complexity and how the software fits into an overall process structure with business practices we’ve evolved over decades of successful delivery experience and academic research.
Complex behavioural science research has been built into the algorithms that manage key information, the methods for selecting which elements are truly important, and the rules for how your team should be using them. You’ll learn in the executive training how knowing where to focus your attention is more important than the tools to do it.
Developing another system with the same functionality would only get you part of the way, and no doubt cost far more time and money than using ours. (If you really must, why not talk to us about a source code license?)
Manual Systems
For small organisations and simple projects, it’s certainly possible to apply the DeliverMyStrategy principles with manual systems. But as your projects and resources multiply and your environment becomes more complex, the task grows exponentially and the application of complexity theory and behavioural science become critical.
Most organisations will see the performance of even the most tightly controlled manual systems degrade rapidly with growth, and when they do, the transition to a more effective system becomes more difficult. If you can implement the right automation tools early, you can lay a base for successful growth instead of sowing the seeds for eventual disaster.
Corporate and Project Governance Consultants
There are any number of large and small consulting practices active in this space, with offerings specialised in project governance, portfolio management, corporate governance and similar areas. Many of these firms are very effective within their specialised area of operations, but fail to address the broader organisational capability.
Corporate governance specialists can help create effective structures for managing business-as-usual operations. Project governance specialists can deliver effective systems for mitigating risk within project delivery organisations. Project management specialists can often deliver individual projects well.
But in our experience, none of these businesses can help you create a reliable organisational capability to deliver project work within the complex matrix of business-as-usual requirements, external relationships and changing priorities in real, large organisations.
It’s always a good idea to consider the alternatives and Caravel Group would like to help, as a part of our Risk-free Engagement Approach.
Contact us directly, to find out more…use the Contact Form, email or ring directly, or read more about how we can help: