Internal tools often look successful at handover. People clapped. A spreadsheet was replaced. Then the person who understood the exceptions left the thread, and the tool became another thing to work around.
Launch is not ownership
Someone has to answer the quiet questions: what to do when the record is wrong, who can override a rule, and whether yesterday’s exception is now the product. If that person is “the project”, the tool has no owner.
The second month is when the real users arrive — the ones who were too busy to join the pilot.
Budget the week after
- A named owner, not a shared inbox.
- Time in the first month to change the thing, not only to train it.
- A place to write the exceptions so they do not live in chat.
If those three are missing, the tool was a project. Projects end. Tools have to be run. Say that in the brief, or do not be surprised when people go back to the spreadsheet.