Case Studies
Behind every technology project is a real organisation trying to keep things running while change happens.
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The case studies below share examples of projects where the focus was on making change practical and workable for the people involved.
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Turning complex system projects into clear operational change
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Aligning teams, vendors and leadership
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Creating the foundations for successful adoption
Good change doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when people understand what’s changing and why.
Case Study 1 - A Membership Organisation
The situation
A national professional association was considering an upgrade to their membership and learning platform. The project included a new member portal, member learning platform websites, member database, stakeholder database, and member enquiry management.
​ It was a large program for a small team that still needed to keep daily services running for members.
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Early on it became clear the project had a challenge.​
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Processes were unclear and different teams had different expectations
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Staff were worried the new system would create more work, not less
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​The organisation needed someone who could step back, understand the real operations, and translate the project into practical change for the team.
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The approach
Sheena was brought in to lead the change and operational design work.
The focus was simple: understand how the organisation really runs, and make sure the new system would support current work and be sustainable into the future.
The work included:
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Building relationships with all stakeholders
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Documenting processes across membership, events, learning and finance
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Aligning teams how the organisation actually operates
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Identifying vendor options and selecting a vendor
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Preparing the organisation for the launch of a new member portal
What happened
As the work progressed, it became clear the selected vendor solution was not going to deliver what the organisation needed.
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Instead of pushing ahead with a risky rollout, the project paused.
That pause allowed the organisation to:
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clearly understand its own processes
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identify gaps in the system design
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reconsider the vendor approach before committing further investment
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The result
Although the system was not rolled out at that stage, the work created something equally valuable.
The organisation ended the project with:
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documented end-to-end processes
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a clear understanding of system requirements
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stronger internal alignment across teams
Most importantly, the organisation avoided launching a system that would have caused significant operational issues.
Sometimes the best outcome in a transformation is stopping before the wrong change goes live.
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