You Sign The Contract When You Know Least
Two things move in opposite directions across a programme. What you know goes up. What you can still change goes down. They cross — and the platform, the scope and who gets to decide what are all settled before they do.
Freedom to change is highest before anything is committed and falls with every decision. Knowledge arrives later, once the build starts and reality pushes back. Your ERP, your payroll system, your HRIS, the scope and the governance architecture are all chosen to the left of the crossing.
Transcript
You Sign The Contract When You Know Least
You can still change anything 0:00
Every programme reaches a point where you can still change almost anything about it. It is the same point at which you know least about it. That is where the contract gets signed. Two things move in opposite directions across a programme. What you know goes up. Slowly at first, then fast, once the build starts and reality pushes back. What you can still change moves the other way. Highest before anything is committed. Dropping with every decision you make.
Where the two curves cross 0:31
Draw both and they cross. Before they cross, changing your mind is cheap. After they cross, you finally know things. And changing your mind is expensive. The platform is chosen before they cross. Your ERP, your payroll system, your HRIS.
What gets committed first 0:48
The scope is written before they cross. Who decides what. Who you escalate to. How the whole programme is governed. All of it is set before they cross. Then you spend three years finding out whether those choices were right.
Not effort. The shape of it 1:03
This is not a failure of effort. It is the shape of the problem. Researchers have a name for the part before the build. They call it the front end. The group that has studied it longest puts it plainly.
What the research says 1:17
The front end is when fundamental choices are made. Uncertainty is at its highest. Freedom to choose is at its optimum. And available information is most restricted. Those are their words, not ours. The same paper names the trap that follows.
Where the money actually goes 1:33
Less gets spent choosing the right solution than on improving delivery once the solution is locked. Most of the effort to remove risk goes into the phase where the least risk can be removed. Here is what that costs.
Nine purchases, audited 1:47
In 2022 the Australian National Audit Office examined a Commonwealth agency's nine technology purchases. Public sector, because that is where the numbers get published. The pattern is not theirs alone. In five of the nine, nobody worked out what it might cost before deciding how to buy it. In seven of the nine, there was no risk assessment at all. One went to a single supplier, for a hundred and twenty one thousand dollars.
$121,000 became $4.9 million 2:15
The contract was then changed ten times over two years. It finished at four point nine million. Every one of those changes was decided after the crossing, against a contract written before it. The audit called it ineffective. A follow up three years later found real reform, not yet embedded.
Decide differently, knowing less 2:36
None of this means you should know more before you start. You cannot. It means you should decide differently while you know less. Make fewer decisions you cannot undo. Agree who decides what before the first thing goes wrong, not during it. Choose a vendor against your outcome, not against their proposal. And have someone independent read the business case before it is approved.
What we will not promise 3:00
We will not tell you this guarantees a better outcome. Nobody can. What the research supports is narrower, and more useful. An independent read, early, changes the decision.
Rydel Group 3:15
That is what Rydel Group does. Independent governance advice, while the crossing is still ahead of you. Find out where yours sits. The Programme Readiness assessment. Eighteen questions. rydelgroup.com.