Stress Testing a High Stakes Investment Before Committing
Client
A large organisation planning a significant multi year investment in a new digital platform and operating model.
Challenge
The organisation was close to a decision on a major spend that would:
- Replace several legacy systems
- Change how multiple teams worked day to day
- Lock in a vendor and architecture for at least five to seven years
There were strong views around the table. Some leaders were highly supportive. Others were worried about risk, hidden costs, and organisational readiness.
Key concerns included:
- Limited visibility of long term operational and financial impacts
- Uncertainty about adoption and change fatigue in frontline teams
- Conflicting assumptions between technology, finance, and business units
- Pressure to move quickly without feeling fully confident in the decision
The executive team did not want another glossy business case that hid uncertainty behind perfect numbers. They wanted a clear view of risk, trade offs, and confidence levels before signing.
Approach
The organisation engaged Ministry of Insights to run a Decision Assurance Lab Sprint over several weeks.
The sprint was designed to do one thing very well:
Help the executive team see the decision clearly from multiple angles before committing.
Working with sponsors and key stakeholders, Ministry of Insights:
- Clarified the core decision question
- Captured existing assumptions about benefits, costs, risks, and timeframes
- Used AI supported modelling to test multiple scenarios, including best case, base case, and stress case
- Mapped stakeholder impacts and organisational readiness indicators
- Identified critical uncertainties and questions that needed to be resolved
The lab did not try to make the decision for the organisation. It created a structured environment where the decision could be examined, challenged, and refined.
Outcomes
By the end of the Decision Assurance Sprint, the organisation had:
- A clear comparison of options rather than a single recommended path only
- An explicit list of assumptions and the evidence behind them
- Visibility of where the business case was robust and where it was fragile
- A set of targeted mitigations for the highest risk elements of the plan
- A shared understanding across executives, rather than separate mental models
In this case, the outcome was not a simple yes or no. The decision was adjusted:
- The scope was staged to reduce initial risk
- Additional investment was allocated to change and adoption support
- Several technical dependencies were addressed earlier to avoid downstream bottlenecks
The executive team approved the investment with a higher level of confidence and a clearer early warning framework.
Value Delivered
For leadership
- A better conversation about risk, confidence, and trade offs
- Less reliance on overly optimistic single path business cases
- A practical way to show board members that the decision had been tested
For the organisation
- Reduced likelihood of unpleasant surprises in later stages
- More realistic delivery timelines and expectations
- Stronger alignment between technology, finance, and operations
For teams
- Early acknowledgement of change impacts and support needs
- A sense that risks and concerns had been heard and addressed
- Greater trust in the decision process, even among those who were cautious
Why It Worked
- The Decision Assurance Lab Sprint delivered value because:
- It focused on quality of thinking, not volume of documentation
- AI was used to explore scenarios and test assumptions, not to give a single answer
- Human judgment and accountability stayed at the centre of the decision
