When should you use a Decision Review?
Use it before approving an expensive technology, product, transformation, cyber, compliance or operating-model decision when the problem, solution or business case has not been independently tested.
- A vendor proposal is already on the table.
- Different advisers are recommending different answers.
- The Board wants a defensible commercial and risk case.
- A project is drifting and the underlying decision may need to be revisited.
- The organisation knows change is needed but does not yet know what form it should take.
What happens during the review?
1. Frame the decision
Clarify what is being decided, who owns it, the investment at risk and the deadline.
2. Challenge the problem
Test assumptions, evidence, root causes, affected groups and the cost of doing nothing.
3. Design the options
Consider build, buy, change, replace and stop. Design each viable option to enough depth that it can be compared honestly.
4. Design the preferred solution
Define the architecture, operating model, governance, commercial approach, roadmap, dependencies, acceptance criteria and benefits measures.
5. Recommend
Produce a recommendation the client can defend to executives, investors or the Board.
What do you receive?
Decision Blueprint
What can the recommendation be?
Build. Buy. Change. Replace. Stop. A timing recommendation such as defer may also be recorded within the Blueprint where the problem is valid but readiness is insufficient.
How is independence protected?
The review fee is fixed and identical whatever the recommendation. The recommendation is completed before a delivery proposal is discussed. Stopping earns SafeSpace nothing beyond the review fee. That is the point.