10 best practices to make your first IoT project a success

A recent Cisco study found that 75% of IoT projects fail. Here are 10 best practices to make your first IoT project a success.

Cisco surveyed 1,845 business and IT decision makers in small and medium-sized enterprises and found that nearly three-quarters of Internet of Things (IoT) projects fail, with the top five reasons for failure being:

1. Long time to complete
2. Poor quality of data collected
3. Limited in-house expertise
4. IoT Team Integration
5. Budget overruns

These results are not surprising given that IoT solutions are still immature, technical standards are still evolving, and IoT practitioners have limited expertise.

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Based on the survey results, how can you ensure the success of your first IoT project implementation? In this article, I will share ten best practices for managers planning their first IoT project.

1. Solve customer concerns

Whether it’s a pilot project or a small IoT project joining a larger non-IoT project, we must ensure that the project we are doing solves a real problem.

Only in this way can you ensure that the company pays enough attention and support to the project, whether it is solving simple problems or contributing resources to the company, it will provide the foundation for the success of your subsequent IoT projects.

2. Be realistic

As early adopters of IoT, enterprises have limited capabilities in IoT and therefore need to learn quickly. Managers must plan in several ways:

• Don’t try to “change the world”, but focus on doing one or two things;
• Determine the needs and do not change them at will;
• Develop contingency plans that go beyond everyday resources and costs.

3. Update process and strategy

IoT solutions will disrupt the company's existing processes and policies. If you only update the technology without updating the processes and policies, you may run into the trouble of "getting bad news faster."

Implementing IoT technology is only half the solution; its full potential can be realized by updating related processes and policies, or in some cases, creating entirely new ones.

4. Close cooperation with partners

IoT solutions involve multiple teams within the enterprise. Work with relevant teams in the early planning stages to understand their needs, obtain their support (such as knowledge, resources, and budget), and use their influence to clear possible obstacles during the execution phase. If your organization has an innovation and transformation office, be sure to work with them.

It is equally important to collaborate with IoT solution providers throughout the process. Their solutions are still evolving and improving in the market. Keep collaborating with IoT vendors, co-designing solutions with them, telling them what features you want, reporting bugs and testing updated versions of the products.

5. Use external resources to improve capabilities

Use external resources to make up for the lack of internal capabilities. Obtain information from industry blogs, information media (for example, IoT Home), publications and analytical reports to build your own IoT knowledge framework; improve project planning and execution capabilities by establishing cooperation with feature writers, IoT consultants and innovation labs.

6. Dealing with various obstacles

The more disruptive an IoT solution is, the greater the resistance to adoption it will face, both internally and externally. Whether the impact is small or large, plans need to be made early on to address resistance in order to ensure the success of an IoT project.

Identify the affected groups and their degree of impact, understand their different opinions, develop a plan to resolve objections, make it transparent, communicate with relevant personnel regularly, strive to resolve these issues before the IoT solution is implemented, and respond promptly to any concerns raised during the project.

7. Determine your goals

During the project planning phase, determine the key outcomes of the project. In addition to determining the goals to be achieved by the IoT solution, consider internal capability building, gap identification (processes, policies, technology, resources, etc.), enterprise readiness, and channel/customer acceptance.

Treat early IoT projects as learning experiences and use them to learn, experiment, and identify problems, allowing subsequent projects to be implemented faster.

8. Shared Ownership and Accountability Framework

IoT solutions involve multiple teams across your organization, so you must establish a structure for shared ownership and accountability to ensure the project’s success.

Clarify responsibilities of key executive sponsors and business unit owners, align the value of the IoT solution with the goals and needs of other teams, and clarify ownership.

9. Create a learning atmosphere

To ensure the success of subsequent IoT projects, a climate of rapid learning must be created from the outset.

During the project, document the process of experimentation, prototyping, and problem solving; at the end of the project, collate the knowledge and expertise gained, then develop a system to preserve and disseminate that knowledge.

Identify who the “experts” are and draw on experiences and projects. Develop a system to share knowledge within the organization with solution providers, consultants, and others.

10. Be flexible and adaptable

Even with careful planning and risk management, your first IoT project is still just a learning experience.

Your planning and risk are based only on what you know; unforeseen events happen because there are things that neither you nor your advisors or suppliers know.

In this environment, the project team should be flexible in dealing with unexpected events, and the project plan should leave room for unexpected situations. At the same time, project team members should be selected based on factors such as their ability to quickly adapt and learn professional knowledge and execution.