Project Strategy

Credentials attest to someone's qualifications, skills, or identity and have the potential to provide access to many varied opportunities. To achieve this potential, it’s important to be able to clearly communicate the purpose and scope of your project in a language that will resonate with your community.

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In a nutshell, Project Strategy is where you will define your project’s what, why, and for whom. Working through this step as a team can help you establish a shared definition of success, stay focused on what’s important, and identify potential misalignment early to avoid inconvenience or wasted resources (it’s not uncommon, and it’s a good thing to catch early!). Whether you are just getting started or are further along on your project planning or implementation journey, the critical elements in this section will help you choose a scope and approach that matches where you are and what you, your workers, learners, and project partners are looking for.

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Implementation teams can develop and use a project strategy document to:

Align your internal team with the purpose, context, and scope of your project, as well as create transparency about the project’s goals.
Share information about your project with prospective partners, funders, and/or participants for onboarding and socialization.
Ensure your team stays on purpose, context, and scope.

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As a project team, reflect on the table and answer the questions for each element in the template. Together, you will develop a project positioning document for your team to use and periodically review. Completing this may require some discovery work.

Template

Element	Description	Project Context
Purpose	This refers to the “why” or motivation for issuing LERs as VCs. Projects are typically undertaken to create or improve something, solve a problem, meet a need, or seize an opportunity in the market.	Broadly, issuing LERs as VCs promises numerous benefits for a state or market sector, as well as the employers, learners, and workers involved, mainly improving the effectiveness of skills-based hiring and advancement activities. ‍ Yet, at a specific project level, each implementation project will have its own mission, goals, and SBHA problems or opportunities it intends to support or solve. This leads to varying ways to implement a VC project, as well as to evaluate its effectiveness and impact.
Community Context	This refers to the specific circumstances, environment, and factors that surround and influence a project's execution.	Define the location, the industry focus selected (e.g., healthcare vs teaching), target audience to earn credentials (e.g., students in a particular program or employees in a particular role). ‍ Document the level of digitization of records and overall familiarity with verifiable credentials within the context - in other words, the starting point you are building upon.
Records and Credentials	This refers to the “what” of your verifiable credential project. What types of achievements or records might you issue as verifiable credentials?	Different types of credentials serve different purposes. For example, awarding credentials for course completion is a great way of creating data about what people know, while awarding credentials for membership in a club or association is a great way to support individuals in building identity and networks (among other things). Your “what” should support your “why” - in other words, make sure the credentials you issue support the goals you’ve identified in the “purpose” section above. ‍
Scope	This refers to the project's boundaries and objective, estimated timeline, and estimation of resources needed to complete the project.	A small scope may involve implementing open data standards within a current process (e.g., a pilot issuing LER as VCs to 30 people in a class/course), and a large scope may involve issuing LER as VCs to all workers in a sector across multiple employers. ‍ ‍See the section below for guidance in defining your scope.

Defining Scope

We propose the following terminology for describing the overall project scope, in order of smallest to largest: i) planning an implementation project, ii) a "pilot" or "demonstration" project, and iii) taking an existing effort to scale.

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Each serves a different purpose in developing successful SBHA ecosystems, with pilots and demonstration projects focused on testing a solution and scaling projects focused on achieving benefits for large populations of employers and workers. Using planning and pilot projects before a broad rollout allows for iteration based on the learnings gained during each former phase.

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The importance of learning, iterating, and generating buy-in can’t be overstated. The issuing and verification of LERs as VCs does not address all challenges in hiring, recruitment, and advancement. While you and your partners may clearly see the benefits of issuing and using LERs as VCs, only some of the people and organizations you work with will initially see the benefits for existing human talent and workforce development processes. Change management always requires deep discussions and socialization as to “why” the change is really needed, and what change an innovation will truly deliver.

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One way to navigate this is to start with a planning or pilot project focusing on the people and organizations whose needs are the best fit for issuing LERs as VCs. It may be a niche group or use case. You can use the momentum of a highly aligned, small-scale project to generate early wins, develop case studies and stories of success, and better understand how your system would work if demand for issuing LER as VCs was strong. This can help you justify expansion of the project.

To identify the scope of your implementation project, reflect on the table and answer the in the Scope section of the Project Strategy template.

Template

Element	Planning	Pilot	Demonstration
Focus	*Understanding the Problem/Opportunity:* Ideate and test out concepts of proposed value propositions that are a good fit for the needs of the people and organizations your project intends to benefit.	*Testing a Solution:* This involves testing the viability and effectiveness of the solutions for issuing LERs as VCs for SBHA activities on a smaller, focused or niche scale.	*Increasing Impact:* Involves applying successful patterns to larger populations and networks, scaling the benefits of solutions for issuing LERs as VCs for SBHA activities to a broader community within a region, industry, or with additional external partners.
Scale	Testing concepts and exploring problems and opportunities	Testing prototypes and solutions on a smaller, focused or niche scale	Broad-scale implementation across a sector, group, or ecosystem.
Community	nternal ideation with the team and trusted partners; conceptual testing with people and organizations who could most benefit or be impacted (i.e. learners and hiring managers)	Specific group or context, and some partners	Wider community, networks and ecosystem of partners
Outcomes	Ideating and co-designing project and solution possibilities, defining the essential vision, concept, and goals,, use cases and contextual stories, and evidence of problem/opportunity-solution fit.	Identify achievable and measurable expected results for focused or niche populations, that will inform how the project proceeds,is replicated or scaled, identifying challenges, and making adjustments to the solution, project design, and/or people and organizations served.	Larger scale rollout improves hiring and advancement within intended communities and market sectors. Networks of interoperable LERs strengthen, building momentum and connections across projects.
Key Activities	Identifying which people and organizational needs could be best met by skills-based approaches Exploring relevant literature, case studies, and industry trends Defining and testing the high-level objectives and potential benefits (see Evaluation Plan section of this Guide) Outlining possible project partners, and components of a solution for issuing LERs as VCs possible solution providers Pivots or changes to project positioning, if needed, reflect improving understanding of the project context and solution applicability.	Selecting a specific credential use context (learning or work as well as industry), region, department, or team for the pilot Designing a focused pilot plan with clear objectives and metrics for testing Implementing the solution for issuing LERs as VCs for testing across 1 or 2 use cases in a controlled environment Gathering feedback and evaluating outcomes (see Evaluation Plan section of this Guide) Detailed discovery of use cases for scaled demonstrations	Replicating and/or scaling up the successful elements identified in the pilot Documenting success stories and developing case studies of use and impact Conducting workshops or presentations to onboard partners and participants, and sharing results Encouraging wider adoption of the solution across the region, industry, or organization
Risk	Low: Minimal risk, as the focus is on conceptual ideation and early discovery of risks, problems, and misalignments.	Medium: Allows for identification of problems and mitigation on a smaller scale.	High: Requires a comprehensive risk management plan to address potential challenges at the regional, industry, or organizational level.
Resourcing	Low: Minimal cost, people, and time are focused on conceptual ideation and planning with some discovery.	Medium: This requires more money, time, and people as it is targeted and smaller in scale, yet it requires solution testing, usability, and development work.	High: Demands a more extensive allocation of budget, timeline, and people resourcing across partners, including budget, personnel, and technology.