Digital Handoffs: The Delivery Paradox
While digital projects celebrate on-time delivery, we find the real threat to success lies in the handoffs—the critical transitions between teams where intent is diluted, context is lost, and the promised business value quietly leaks away.
70% of digital transformations fail to meet their objectives according to McKinsey & Company. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and PwC have similar statistics. Research by McKinsey and the University of Oxford found that most large IT projects run 45% over budget, 7% over time, and deliver 56% less value than predicted.
The dashboards look green, the project closes, and the slide deck celebrates success. But ask the business six months on and the story changes. The truth is simple but uncomfortable: the greatest risk doesn’t live inside the build—it hides in the handoffs.
Every critical transition between teams, systems, and mindsets is a moment where intent is diluted, context is lost, and value quietly leaks away. These are the places projects are won or wasted.
Oak Consult calls these value-leak points handoffs. They are not milestones; they are governance gates. Let’s look at the four most common transitions that quietly undermine digital return on investment—and how to close them.
Handoff 1: Strategy → Execution — The Planning Gap
Failure Point: The moment the board’s strategic intent is handed to the delivery team. The “why” is lost in the rush to define the “what”.
When PowerPoint strategy meets spreadsheet delivery, nuance disappears. Strategic outcomes such as “increase customer retention by 10 per cent” are mistranslated into technical outputs like “build feature X.”
Key Friction
- The underlying issue is that delivery teams are often incentivized by task completion and velocity, not by the actual value or usage the feature drives.
- The strategy document is often archived and replaced by the Gantt chart, causing senior leaders to lose the contextual ‘why’ in the daily noise of the ‘what’ and reducing strategic oversight.
Fixes
- Outcome-Driven Roadmaps: Tie every deliverable to a measurable business outcome, not a generic technical milestone. This shifts the focus from building things to achieving results.
- The “Why” Review: Require project leads to present why each initiative matters to the steering group, not just what is being built or when it’s due. This forces contextual alignment.
Warning Sign: If your steering pack reports progress in percentages complete rather than outcomes achieved, the handoff has already failed.
Handoff 2: Build → Business Adoption — The Technical Chasm
Failure Point: Development finishes and the system is “thrown over the wall” to end-users.
The technology is sound. The tempo is wrong. Tools are designed for process efficiency, but not for human workflow. The result: resistance, frustration, and “shadow systems” that quietly re-create the old world in spreadsheets.
Key Friction
- Developers optimise for features; users optimise for speed. Tools are often built in a vacuum, optimising for technical efficiency, while users are primarily trying to optimise for speed and familiarity within their demanding daily workflow.
- Training focuses on buttons, not behaviours. When training explains navigation before explaining purpose, adoption will stall.
Fixes
- Embed Adoption Leads: Nominate credible business users to sit inside the development stream from day one—translating jargon, testing realism, and building advocacy.
- Design Training Around the Day-in-the-Life: Teach how real work flows through the tool (e.g., “Here is how you close a deal now”), not just where to click.
- Update Process and Journey Maps: Ensure Business Analysts or Adoption Leads update Customer Journey and Process maps, documenting how the new system changes customer and internal pathways before training begins.
Warning Sign: If your training completion rates are high but system usage is low, the adoption handoff has failed.
Handoff 3: Project → BAU — The Sustainability Drain
Failure Point: The project team disbands, leaving behind an under-resourced “Business-as-Usual” (BAU) function.
Twelve months of expertise evaporate in a fortnight. The new system becomes orphaned; enhancements die in inboxes; data quality decays. If ownership isn’t named, entropy wins.
Key Friction
- No single point of ownership for system, data, and process. When accountability is shared between IT, Data Governance, and Operations, it often means the long-term evolution is owned by no one.
- Support teams inherit software they didn’t help build, leading to slow fixes and deep frustration for end-users.
Fixes
- Tapered Exit: Create a 90-day “Hypercare” window where project specialists remain on call, slowly handing off knowledge and control as BAU capability builds confidence.
- System Ownership Scorecard: Clarify who owns the platform (IT), the data (Governance), and the process (Operations Lead). These three distinct ownerships must be formally assigned.
- Document the “Why” (The Legacy): Link every requirement to its original business driver. Future BAU teams need to know not only what was built but why a specific decision was made (e.g., why system A was chosen over B) to maintain context and prevent expensive regressions.
Warning Sign: If your new system’s champions and primary subject matter experts are contractors, the countdown to value decay has already begun.
Handoff 4: Launch → Optimisation — The Stagnation Trap
Failure Point: The organisation treats go-live as the finish line instead of the start line.
Without a feedback loop or improvement budget, even good tools drift out of step with the business. Every system without iteration becomes legacy in 18 months.
Key Friction
- KPIs stop at deployment; performance isn’t measured in use. The system enters the “set-and-forget” cycle where teams continue to report on uptime, not on whether the tool is actually driving revenue or reducing cost.
- Feedback relies on complaints instead of structured, proactive insight from the user base.
Fixes
- Establish the Measurement Rhythm: Define clear KPIs for the new platform’s adoption and value—usage, satisfaction, and outcome metrics—and review them monthly in the BAU governance structure.
- Formal Feedback Channel and Budget: Earmark a small (but non-negotiable) continuous improvement budget—even 5% of the original project spend—to handle triaged enhancement requests and sustain momentum.
- Treat the Platform as a Product: Appoint a permanent, named Product Owner accountable for evolution, not just maintenance. This individual champions the asset and ensures its continued alignment with business strategy.
Warning Sign: When the only updates being prioritised are mandatory security patches, your innovation has already stalled.
Closing the Gaps for Enduring Value
Digital projects only deliver value when the handoffs are managed with the same discipline as the project plan itself. Each transition is a governance gate, not a box to tick.
If every handoff lost just five per cent of your project’s intended value, how much of that original promise would remain by the end of the first year?
True success is measured not by launch date, but by sustained adoption and realised outcomes.
The Oak Consult View
Whether you’re starting a major transformation or struggling with post-launch drift, Oak Consult brings the senior, practical leadership to turn “delivered” into “adopted” and ambition into measurable value.
If this article resonated, talk to us about reviewing your delivery rhythm or stress-testing your next transition plan.