It exposes vague strategy
If the problem is unclear, the project will drift.
Ten questions every board should ask before a material technology decision.
This is the simple version of the conversation directors should force into the room before approving a major technology bet.
- What business problem are we solving?
- Who owns the business outcome?
- What customer, member, staff, risk, or revenue result should change?
- What assumptions are we making that should be tested first?
- Which vendors, APIs, data flows, or cloud services does this depend on?
- What can break, and who decides what happens next?
- What is our exit plan if the vendor, platform, or strategy fails?
- How will cybersecurity, privacy, compliance, and operational resilience be affected?
- What legacy work, process, or system gets retired if this succeeds?
- What metric will the board review six months after launch?
How to use it
Put these questions into the board packet before the proposal reaches the approval stage. If management cannot answer them clearly, the project is not ready for a clean vote.
Why this checklist matters.
It names accountability
If everybody owns the result, nobody owns it.
It surfaces hidden dependency
Vendor, data, API, and cloud exposure need daylight before approval.