Defining Your Needs

According to IBM, C-suite executives tend to be very cautious toward disruptive business technologies, mainly because they trigger a much cheaper and faster market entrance for new companies, hence strengthening competition. On the other hand, it is no secret that many businesses collapse due to their inadaptability to meet evolving demands, especially in the digital age. In the latest PwC CEO Survey (https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2019/report/pwc-22nd-annual-global-ceo-survey.pdf), 28% of businesses have rated speed of technological change as an extremely concerning threat. Often, these traditional companies occult the fact that digitalization has quickly shifted the way products and services are consumed and struggle to leverage new technology to answer new consumption behaviors from clients and prospects. Blockchain is not going to make it easier...

Deciding to implement a blockchain

Any organization should start with a problem statement. Starting from the technology is pointless because it does not answer the end user's need. I often compare this typical behavior as grabbing a screwdriver and checking what can be fixed with it. Sure, some stuff might be repaired along the way, but the main problem would not have been fixed. Hence, it is important to identify the problem first, before thinking of a way out.

Once the issue has been identified, you should focus on the simplest solution available and answer the question: Do I actually need a blockchain?

The final response to this question will most likely be determined by the subsequent questions:

• Do you need to ensure a state of information or allow a digital value to be transferred between stakeholders?
• Are all of the stakeholders independent?
• Is there any trust...

How much does a blockchain cost?

You probably won't be surprised if I tell you that the price of a blockchain project varies a lot. Depending on what you are willing to achieve, the use of a certain infrastructure over another will range the investments from small to large. For example, the cost of authenticating official documents through a public blockchain will mostly comprise the transaction fees levied by the network to process the transactions, which is not a very expensive blockchain application. Using a public blockchain is sometimes the cheapest solution if we wish to benefit from an already existing infrastructure. Besides the transaction fees, the costs will mostly rely on developing the application on top of it and focusing on user experience.

On the other hand, if you are building an entire network from scratch, like Facebook is doing with their Libra Project...

Challenges and issues

Now that you have every key to carry out a blockchain project, you must be aware of some shortcomings that are usually encountered with traditional blockchain project management and operations that might curb your initiative:

• Stakeholders' processes vary widely according to the organization and even more according to the industry.
• Many differences exist between stakeholders' systems for managing operations and running projects.
• Organizations often use disparate tools between their own departments or services, which does not facilitate traceability and smoothness during implementation. Because these departments usually run operations in silos, there is a lack of a wider approach where the processes would be integrated, transparent, and interoperable.

These issues make data management difficult, increase cost, and extend delays, hence leading to...

Business leaders' perception of blockchain

This chapter aims to establish the key statements and perceptions of business leaders and executives around the world. It is often interesting to hear the opinion of other people, especially those who influence and stimulate our vision. An emerging technology usually raises critics among economists, scientists, and politicians debating financial, ethical, environmental, social, or technical benefits and drawbacks.

Over the past few years, blockchain has attracted a growing community of developers, businessmen, scientists, and tech-savvy people who contributed to democratizing the technology and exposing its applicability. But the ecosystem has also faced several critics and disbeliefs, sometimes from tech leaders or people who actually led the advancement of the technology in the first place. Criticism started to rise as blockchain...

Summary

Throughout this chapter, we've underlined that identifying and understanding the business problem is the key to solving it because it's the best starting point on which to build a successful solution. We showed that, sometimes, blockchain was not appropriate because the solution didn't involve criteria that was mandatory when choosing blockchain, such as the need to store information or the alignment of participants' interests. But when blockchain stands as a suitable solution, many diverse assessments, requirements, and topics must be addressed. Among them is the return on investment, the regulatory constraints, or the acceptance level of the teams to change. Besides these open points, we tried to answer a difficult but necessary question regarding the cost of a blockchain, which, in the end, can be considered a regular IT project including specific...