Shane Murphy: A Cambridge Pilot Project Should Have a Question It Can Answer

The word pilot can make a proposal sound cautious without explaining what the exercise is meant to establish. A team may agree to try something for a few weeks and only later discover that its members expected different kinds of evidence. One wanted to test a working process. Another wanted customer feedback. A third thought the decision to adopt the idea had already been made.

I am Shane Murphy, also known as Shane Ian Murphy, formerly of Cambridge and formerly of Limitless Mobile, where I was co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer. My recommendation for a small UK business is to begin a pilot with a question it can reasonably answer. The Cambridge example in this article is hypothetical and reports no actual trial or measured outcome.

Imagine a team considering a new way to handle incoming service enquiries. Its proposed pilot involves a small group of colleagues using a shared form and a revised handover process. The broad ambition is to improve coordination. That ambition is understandable, but it does not yet explain what the team should observe or what would justify a wider introduction.

A more useful question might be whether the receiving colleague can identify the next action without asking the sender to repeat information. That question gives the pilot a clear subject. It also makes room for an honest result: the new form might help in some circumstances and create confusion in others. A useful trial can reveal those differences without needing to be declared a success or failure in every respect.

Before starting, I would describe the current process sufficiently to make comparison meaningful. Who receives an enquiry? What information is ordinarily available? Where does uncertainty arise? This account does not need to become a large research project, but the team needs a common picture of what it is trying to improve.

Next, define the boundary of the exercise. Which types of enquiry will be included, who will participate and what will remain outside the trial? A narrow boundary helps participants understand what they are being asked to do. It also prevents a positive result from being stretched into a claim about work the pilot never examined.

The team should agree how it will record observations. I would collect examples of complete and incomplete handovers, questions raised by the receiving colleague and situations in which the proposed process did not fit. A short account of what happened can be more useful than a rating with no explanation. The record should avoid collecting personal information that is unnecessary for understanding the process.

Participants also need permission to identify inconvenience. If everyone believes the pilot exists to confirm a decision already made, problems may be softened or left unrecorded. I would explain that a result requiring revision is still useful. The purpose is to learn whether the approach serves the work, not to reward agreement with its designer.

There should be a route back to an understood process if the trial creates confusion. That route needs an owner and a practical trigger. For example, the coordinator might pause use of the form for a category of enquiry that it does not describe adequately, while the team resolves the missing information. A pilot should not require participants to continue a visibly unsuitable step merely to preserve its timetable.

I would set a review date and explain what can be decided at that review. The available decisions might be to stop, revise the approach, extend the trial to answer a specific unresolved question or consider a wider introduction. Extending a pilot without identifying what remains to be learned can turn a temporary experiment into an indefinite arrangement.

At the review, separate observations from interpretations. The team may observe that several enquiries required clarification. It still needs to examine why: the form may be unclear, the task may require discussion, or participants may need a better introduction. A number alone does not select the explanation.

A small pilot earns its value by reducing a particular uncertainty. For a Cambridge team considering a new process, I would judge the exercise by whether it leaves a clearer decision and an honest account of what remains unknown. The most useful conclusion may be a carefully defined next question.

About the author: Shane Murphy, professionally also known as Shane Ian Murphy, is a former co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Limitless Mobile. This author-origin business commentary was prepared with AI assistance.

Official profile: https://shanemurphy.co.uk/

Career background: https://shanemurphy.co.uk/career