Abstract
Even though digital innovation is currently a priority for companies worldwide, very few have a structured process designed to collect ideas and transform them into successful innovation projects. Most traditional companies are familiar with creating processes to standardize better practices. However, these processes can make them more resistant to change and kill innovation in their early stages. A second factor that can take its toll on innovation is the predictive, risk–averse approach of traditional project management, which demands a well–defined scope, fixed expectations on results, with inflexible deadlines or standard KPIs.
Another common mistake when starting to implement digital transformation projects is focusing exclusively on technologies. Probably the most significant challenge concerning digital transformation is changing people's mindset to understanding the potential of digital technologies and seek opportunities within their work. The oil and gas industry traditionally focus its innovation effort on R&D. Digital innovation, however, is dispersed and should occur in all sectors of the organization; thus, workforce engagement is essential.
Engineering has excellent opportunities since most processes are still document-centric as opposed to data-centric. For example, schedule and design progress are entirely based on the publishing and approval of documents. Design team member's performance is usually measured by elaborating and reviewing documents. The most significant part of design handover is comprised of documents, and several KPIs are evaluated based on documentation. Redesigning these processes to a data–centric approach, in which everything revolves around databases, attributes, and data models, can increase quality and data consistency as well as reducing design cost and time.
