Ongoing stewardship
How should a business review a digital investment after six months?
Six months on, ask which problem became smaller and which new work the solution created.
Published 25 September 2026
Return to the investment case
Find the original problem and the assumptions used to approve the work. Compare real cases before and after, including difficult ones. A launch date, login count or completed feature list does not answer whether the intended benefit arrived.
Talk to the people doing the work and those accountable for the result. Their disagreement can reveal where effort moved rather than disappeared.
Make the next commitment explicit
Count maintenance, support, training, exceptions and workarounds. Decide whether to continue, refine, connect another system, expand or retire the solution. Name the person responsible and the evidence for that choice.
A review is worthwhile when it changes an investment decision—not when it merely produces a more attractive account of the project.
A new workflow reduced email chasing but added a queue of approvals that takes two days to clear.
Compare the time removed with the waiting introduced. Keep the workflow if the control matters; change the approval rule if routine cases no longer need senior review.