Welcome back to our final blog in our POC blog series—pitfalls and what not to do in your Camunda proof of concept (POC). This time we will focus on possible issues that can creep up and lead your POC astray, ultimately causing failure.
Executing a proof of concept (POC) can be critical when evaluating the platform because it helps validate your assumptions, test the feasibility of the platform, as well as demonstrate the viability of your requirements. However, there are several traps or pitfalls that teams may encounter during the execution of a POC and you will want to stop them before they start or avoid them altogether. With awareness of these things, you can ensure that you do not fall victim to them when you are deeply entrenched in your POC.
If you need to catch up, please read our previous blogs in the POC Series:
- How to Run a Successful Camunda POC
- Planning your Camunda Proof of Concept
- Picking the Perfect Process for your Camunda POC
- What Indicates Success for Your Camunda POC
- Executing your Camunda POC
Let’s take a quick look at some of those potential pitfalls you might encounter as part of your Camunda POC that can set you back and even render your POC a failure.
The potential issues
You have planned your Camunda POC, documented the requirements, and established your internal champions—what potential issues should you watch out for to ensure your POC is successful?
Inadequate planning
First of all, planning is considered the most important step in your Camunda POC. You do not want to rush into a POC without the proper planning—doing so can result in chaos, inefficiency, and eventually failure.
It might seem like planning is a time-consuming and lengthy process, but taking this time upfront and making sure you have carefully outlined your assumptions, tasks, resources, requirements, and responsibilities will be both appreciated and a crucial step as you embark on the execution of your POC.
Poorly defined objectives
As we have stressed in this blog series, your POC must have clearly defined objectives and requirements. If you do not have this, you can lose focus going off on tangents that can derail your POC. You need to align your overall objectives with your company’s project goals and carefully document the accompanying requirements to confirm that your POC requirements are achieved when you execute the POC.
Not including user feedback
The importance of getting buy-in from those who will be using Camunda every day as part of their daily work cannot be overstated. If you overlook this crucial user feedback, it can have very negative effects on your POC as well as any related projects after the POC is complete. Things like poor adoption, decreased productivity, negative feedback, increased support costs, and more.
If you include user feedback and then refine and improve requirements and project goals based on that feedback, it can result in a successful POC and future projects.
Ignoring scalability
In many cases, the primary focus of your Camunda POC is demonstrating the feasibility of the platform for your requirements. But don’t forget about scalability. If this is something that needs to be considered and evaluated, then make sure it is written into your POC test requirements. If you don’t address scalability early on, it can result in significant challenges during later stages of development.
Poor or insufficient documentation
Proper documentation is essential for capturing insights, requirement testing results, lessons learned, and potential improvements during the POC execution. You don’t want to neglect the clear documentation of your POC as it can lead to the loss of valuable information captured in the POC process. Without this information, you can lose the insight for future development efforts.
In addition to the documentation of the POC requirements and testing results, documenting and preparing the overall success of the POC in the proper format for stakeholders and executives is also imperative. Capturing the specific requirements most important to your stakeholders in an easily understandable manner can lead to the acceptance of Camunda in your organization.
Inadequate resources
Any POC requires individuals from many different departments with different skills and responsibilities within the organization to be involved in the POC project. These individuals must devote the appropriate time and effort to your Camunda POC. If you do not adequately plan for their involvement, in terms of time and expertise, it can lead to delays in the POC, budget overruns, and ultimately, project failure.
Lack of stakeholder engagement
As we have noted in previous blogs in the POC series, it is so important to have internal Camunda champions and stakeholders within your organization who are there to advocate the success of your POC.
You must ensure that these key stakeholders are involved all through the POC process so that you can hear their feedback. By including them in the POC execution process, you can show them how their feedback is being considered and incorporated appropriately, and assure them that this information is helping to shape the POC and project requirements.
Ignoring possible risks
Every project has risks and POCs are no exception. If there are risks to the success of your POC project, it is important to identify and assess them early. If you have a handle on what these risks are, you can proactively develop strategies to mitigate those risks effectively.
Takeaways
Once you are aware of these common pitfalls, you can be proactive in taking steps to address or eliminate them. By doing so, you increase the likelihood of executing a successful Camunda proof of concept.
More on Camunda POCs
To get more information on executing a POC with Camunda, please review our documentation on POCs. We also offer POC workshops if you are looking for additional guidance. Reach out to our consulting team to discuss a POC workshop.
Don’t forget to catch up on the POC blog series:
- How to Run a Successful Camunda POC
- Planning your Camunda Proof of Concept
- Picking the Perfect Process for your Camunda POC
- What Indicates Success for Your Camunda POC
- Executing your Camunda POC
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