Unlocking Delivery Confidence: Why Implementation Planning Studies Belong at the Heart of Every Project

By James Wetherall, CEO, Geode Solutions

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When we talk about project delivery success, the conversation often centers around procurement frameworks, risk allocation, and implementation timelines. But there’s a crucial piece that’s often undervalued: the Implementation Planning Study (IPS).

While commonly associated with large, high-stakes projects, at Geode Solutions we believe that the IPS belongs at the heart of every project—big or small. It’s not a design phase. By the time you enter an IPS, the solution should already be agreed in principle. The IPS is where the delivery path is validated, gaps are resolved, and shared commitments are locked in.

It’s not just a tool for government tenders or transformation programs. It’s a scalable practice for any initiative where clarity, alignment, and accountability matter.

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More Than Procurement

Implementation Planning Studies are sometimes introduced late in a procurement process to test supplier capability. In that narrow context, they serve as a form of delivery assurance. But if that’s all you use them for, you’re missing their real value.

At its core, the IPS is about making sure everyone is on the same page before work begins—not conceptually, but practically. Who is doing what, when, and how? What assumptions are we relying on? What happens if things change?

Whether you’re standing up a national digital platform or delivering a four-week integration, these questions still apply. And the IPS gives you a structured, time-bound way to answer them—together.

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Turning Agreement into Commitment

An IPS transforms planning into delivery readiness. It’s not about revisiting the business case or redoing the design. It’s about making sure the plan is executable and the people responsible for delivering it are aligned.

During an IPS, we:

• Validate the agreed solution against real-world constraints
• Refine delivery sequencing, dependencies, and assumptions
• Assign clear responsibilities and escalation paths
• Finalise commercial terms, funding models, and timelines
• Document these commitments so they’re ready to be actioned or contracted

This is true whether you’re coordinating across five agencies or two internal teams. Scale doesn’t change the purpose—it just shapes the process.

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What Makes a Good IPS

From our experience, an effective IPS is:

• Right-sized: A six-week IPS for a two-week job is overkill. But half a day spent aligning three internal teams before a new workflow rollout? That is an IPS—just a lighter version.
• Purposeful: It’s not about documentation for the sake of it. It’s about surfacing gaps and resolving them before they cause delays or rework.
• Collaborative: The best IPS processes involve those who will deliver the work. Not just sponsors, but project leads, technical SMEs, and operations.
• Binding: Outcomes should carry weight. The IPS baseline becomes the foundation for delivery decisions and, where needed, change control.

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Where It Adds Value

We’ve used IPS frameworks across a wide range of contexts:

• On large government platforms with multiple vendors and moving parts
• On small internal process improvement initiatives
• During partner onboarding for strategic system rollouts
• Ahead of scaling product implementations into new sites or jurisdictions

In each case, the IPS created clarity, alignment, and accountability that allowed delivery to move faster—with less friction.

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Why It’s Worth Doing Every Time

Projects often go off track not because of poor planning, but because of assumed alignment. Different interpretations of scope. Unclear roles. Gaps in funding or sequencing. An IPS forces those issues to the surface, and helps resolve them while they’re still manageable.

And that’s as true for a quick data migration as it is for a statewide implementation.

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In Summary

The IPS is not a luxury for large programs. It’s a delivery discipline that scales. It’s how you make sure people are aligned, risks are understood, and commitments are clear—before the work starts.

At Geode, we advocate for using IPS approaches on projects of all sizes. Because when everyone’s aligned and accountable from day one, projects don’t just start faster—they finish stronger.

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At Geode Solutions, we help organisations move from strategy to execution with clarity and confidence. If you’re starting something important—even small—we’ll help you get it right.