What does a successful project look like? Not just at go-live, but six months or a year later. When the project team has moved on, the implementation partner has closed out their contract, and the organization is running on its own.
A successful project means people use the new system confidently, reports close cleanly, and leaders are focused on what to build next instead of putting out fires. That’s value realization. Not a launch date. Not a green status report.
The organizations that get there and sustain it don’t stumble into that outcome. They define it before the project starts.
The False Finish Line
In almost every major implementation, there is a moment when the team exhales. The system is live. The go-live date has been hit. The implementation partner declares hypercare complete.
And then, a few weeks later, the real work surfaces. Adoption is slower than expected. Workarounds start appearing. Month-end close takes longer than it should. People are using the system, but not as designed.
This is what happens when a project measures success by the milestone instead of the outcome. Go-live is a moment. Sustained change is a system that has to be designed as deliberately as the implementation itself.
What Measuring Success Early Actually Looks Like
A few years ago, I led the organizational change management work for a $60M, 250-person manufacturing company with 3 separate locations implementing a new ERP system. Every employee touched the system, order through shipment. The stakes were high, and there was no going back. Their legacy system was being sunset.
The first thing we did was define what success looked like, not just at go-live, but after: 30, 60, and 90 days out. And we defined it in two ways: leading indicators and lagging indicators.
Leading indicators are early signals that show whether you’re on track. For us, that meant micro-trainings and quizzes before go-live, a pilot at a smaller plant, end-to-end testing against historical data, and tighter post-go-live reporting cycles to surface issues early.
Lagging indicators came later: stable quarter-end closes, production capacity holding, a small process refinement team working through workflow bottlenecks rather than crisis-managing them.
We also did something that sounds almost too simple: we ramped up production before go-live to build a buffer. When productivity dipped, the impact was smaller. Because we were tracking output, we knew earlier than anticipated that we could bring work back in. The result was full production capacity within the first week, against a planned two-to-three-week recovery timeline.
About six months later, I followed up with former colleagues there. They were already planning to layer on additional ERP modules. Organizations don’t expand systems they don’t trust. That’s sustainment.
The OCM Question That Drives Value Realization
Deliberate, early identification of success measures before the urgency of go-live takes over is what separates projects that sustain results from those that celebrate a launch and then spend the next quarter correcting course.
It’s not complicated in concept. But in practice, it requires someone asking and answering questions that most project teams defer until it’s too late.
- What does “good” look like at 90 days, not just at go-live?
- What are the early signals that adoption is on track and what do we do if they’re not?
- Who owns sustainment after the project team steps back?
- How will we know if the change actually held?
These aren’t afterthoughts. They are integral to the plan.
Why FarWell Measures Success Differently
At FarWell, success isn’t simply a system going live on schedule. We consider it successful when the organization is operating better than it was before and has the confidence and capability to keep improving.
That’s why we don’t align to one software vendor or methodology. Our interest isn’t in a clean project closure. It’s in value realization. Success means your team is running smoothly six months later, and your leaders are asking what’s next — not what went wrong. It’s what we’re working toward from day one.
Your success is our success.
Before your next major initiative, ask: have you defined success beyond launch day? If the answer isn't clear yet, contact us and let’s get to work.
