Something’s up. I was reviewing my web-stats for this site and I found that since Jan 2018 one post has been read 1000’s of more times than any other one. This one: Innovation and Productivity with the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
About 3 years ago, I started to talk about how relevant to the Oil and gas industry were things I had been studying about the 4th Industrial Revolution. At that time no one had a clue what I was talking about. Some thought I may have gone mad. I’m glad to say that things have (mostly) changed.
Who’s talking about it?
Since 2018 I’ve seen the term being used by a number of my peers in Oil and Gas, and when you search on this and combine with the term “Digitalisation” It becomes obvious that there is a major movement underway.
Steve Ashley uses the term in his article: Digital, data and taking control of our own destiny and its also used in this press release from Petrotechnics.
Today this announcement from CapGemini helping Statoil with a 3 year project to create a digital roadmap.
How to assess a digital project
There are still a few fundamental questions that every digitalisation project should be able to answer. Below is your starter for ten, and – yes – you may confer:
Examine the project value:
- What is the primary business driver;
- Does this project fulfil the agenda of the CIO or the COO;
- What is the net cost of this project;
- When will I see value (hint: the choice is either this year, or 3-5+ years out); and
- Is this a platform investment or can it ride a set of network effects?
Examine the project risks:
- What things will prevent me from realising the planned benefits;
- How much change will be required in the way we work;
- If I do this, does it prevent me from doing other things;
- How likely is it to require more money than I’ve budgeted for; and
- What happens if I wait and do it later?
These criteria (and others) should be considered for every project.
Enterprise level
At the enterprise level there are a couple more things that need to be considered including:
- How does this project fit into my portfolio of digitiallisation initiatives;
- As my business gets more digitalised, how am I addressing digital integrity; and
- Should my HSSE function be renamed HSSED?
Further reading
I wrote an article for ITProportal for some of this and here is a note on project portfolio prioritisation that I wrote a few years back – Introduction to Prioritisation V 1.0.
