First of all, there is the view that green-field projects
are by their nature easy. After all, there is no need to cope with hideous
legacies. Also, the ability to create something from scratch in our image and likeness
is naturally viewed as a major plus. This view of green- field reminds me of
Julie Andrews spinning and dancing around the beautiful green hills of
Switzerland under the melodious background of the Sound of Music!
The truth is that, usually driven by ambitious start-up deadlines,
green-field projects require the express deployment of a variety of systems with under-developed resources, and with super-aggressive timelines. Having successfully gone through just such scenario during my last professional stint, I can actually confirm that green-field
projects resemble much more the green field of a football field with you
quarterbacking a team starting its first down from your own five yard line and
expected to score a touchdown in less than a minute through rushes, sacks and
no timeouts. Think of Elway's Drive against Cleveland to get an idea.
Start-up driven green-fields projects demand different kinds
of focus and priorities from typical legacy transformation projects.
These are some of the major differences:
These are some of the major differences:
·
In transformation initiatives you are more
likely to sacrifice schedules to meet minimum functionality requirements. You will almost never be allowed to replace a legacy
system with lesser functionality.
·
In a green-field project you have to focus on delivering
the minimum required functionality necessary to launch or bootstrap the initial
systems. The success of the start-up depends on the green-field results of a
mission critical basis, and there is simply no alternative to fallback to
legacy.
·
Expectations for a transformation delivery are
that it will be of high quality. There is little tolerance for any new systems breaking
down as they replace old-tested solutions.
·
In a green-field delivery, you should assume failures
are more likely to occur and, most likely, the opening of the business won’t
want to wait for you to do a lot of testing. It’s reality. You should put a
higher focus on remediation processes and tools when launching a green-field
deliverable. Also, you will have to be a lot more agile in how you implement
changes in a green-field deployments versus a more structured legacy transformation
initiative.
·
Because you are expected to meet crazy deadlines
and diminishing budgets in a green-field project, innovation becomes even more
critical. You’ll have to be very
creative and quick on your feet in figuring
out ways to leverage preexisting solutions in the market or come up with
creative ‘hacks’ to get the delivery out the door. Still, you will also be
obliged to maintain a minimum of best practice standards to ensure that after
launch clean-up is as painless as possible.