This article gives CEO and COO steering committees a practical accompaniment framework to keep the timeline credible: a one-page timeline risk register, a 60-minute steering agenda that surfaces trends early, and evidence checkpoints that make milestones earn trust. Less theater. More control.

In commerce, the real threats are predictable: data readiness that arrives late, vendor dependencies that drift quietly, business SMEs who get pulled back into the day job, and operational readiness that gets hand-waved until the last mile. The slide stays green, right up until it can’t.