As a programme manager, I knew by June whether I was going to hit my plan for the year.
There's always a tendency to think we have more time than we do. As we all know, Q4 is the most congested quarter in the calendar: budget rounds, year-end close, change freezes, holidays, and every decision deferred over the summer landing at once.
June was the point in the year when I'd stop looking at milestones and start thinking seriously about business outcomes. I'd try to visualise them and question them. If I couldn't see them coming, I would, in theory, course correct and work the changes through with stakeholders. I'd ask three questions:
- Does the programme still make sense?
- Are we still delivering towards valuable business outcomes?
- Or are we just doing this because we're funded and no one has told us to stop?
The third question is the uncomfortable one. Most programmes don't fail dramatically. They stay funded, staffed and reporting green long after the case for them has quietly weakened.
As we close 2026, it's time to reflect honestly on the state of your key programmes, and whether transformation is really happening. What worked, what didn't, and what needs to change.
Here are my top five tips for delivering major transformation in 2027.
1. Re-baseline every programme on outcomes, not activity
Before your 2027 plans are locked, write one line for each major programme: the business outcome it exists to deliver, and who on the business side owns it. Not "deploy the new ERP to three entities". Something like "close the books in five days instead of twelve".
If you can't write the line, or no one in the business will put their name to it, you've found your first problem. Funding shouldn't roll over by default. Make every programme re-earn its budget against the outcome, not the plan.
2. Plan for June, not December
Your 2027 will be decided in the first half. Put a mid-year checkpoint in the diary with each sponsor now, and agree what evidence will show the outcomes are coming. Milestones hit is not evidence. Early adoption, data quality and process performance are.
Front-load the work that always slips: data migration, integration, testing. If the hardest work is scheduled for Q3, you've already spent your recovery time. And plan Q4 as half a quarter, because that's what it turns out to be.
3. Make stopping a legitimate option
The hardest decision in any portfolio is stopping something. Most organisations have no real mechanism for it, so programmes continue because nobody has the standing to say otherwise.
Build stop, pause and reshape into your stage gates as normal outcomes, not career-ending events. Moving money from a drifting programme to one that's working is good management. The test I use is simple: if this programme came to the investment committee today, would we fund it?
4. Test the reporting, not just the status
A RAG report tells you what people are comfortable saying. In my experience, the real risk sits in the gap between the dashboard and what the delivery team says in the corridor. When an amber status rests on a stack of "ifs", it's red.
Ask for the evidence behind the green: test exit criteria, defect trends, data quality, burn rate against plan. Talk to people two levels down. Treat your systems integrator like any other stakeholder, not as the source of truth on its own delivery.
5. Write the post-mortem before you start
In January, get the sponsor, delivery leads and the SI in a room. Tell them it's December 2027 and the programme has missed. Ask each of them to write down why. Within an hour you'll have the real risk register: the data nobody owns, the business experts who'll get pulled back to the day job, the dependency on another programme nobody is managing.
None of it will surprise the people closest to the work. What's usually missing is a safe moment to say it out loud, and some of it won't be said while the person asking is the person accountable. Act on every answer and revisit them at your June checkpoint. It costs a morning in January. Finding the same issues in September costs you the year.
Where Performance Radar fits
This is why we set up Performance Radar. Technology budgets grow every year. The question we keep asking is whether that money is delivering the outcomes it was approved for, or just funding more activity.
We provide independent delivery assurance for CIOs, CFOs and technology leaders running large-scale programmes, including ERP and finance transformations. We sell no software and don't chase follow-on work, so we tell you what we see. The price is fixed on a one-page scope, and we can start within five working days of our first conversation.
If you're heading into 2027 with a programme you're not fully sure of, or one you already know has a problem, our Full Assurance Report sets out the root causes and how to fix them in three to four weeks.
Before your 2027 plans are locked in, schedule a 15-minute introduction.