Case Study: How a Global Enterprise Moved Beyond Project Management to Scale Innovation Pilots

Executive Summary:
As innovation activity increased, this enterprise discovered that traditional project management tools were insufficient for governing pilots. By adopting purpose-built pilot portfolio management, the organization improved decision quality, portfolio visibility, and confidence in which pilots to scale.

Innovation pilots are not projects,they are experiments.

That distinction became increasingly clear to a global energy company operating across complex assets, regulated environments, and geographically distributed teams. As innovation pilots expanded across operations, digital transformation, and sustainability initiatives, leaders began to see strain in how these efforts were managed.

The tools in place were effective at tracking tasks.
They were not designed to support innovation decisions — especially in an environment where risk, safety, and capital allocation matter as much as speed.

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The Challenge: Managing Pilots Like Projects

Initially, innovation pilots were managed using traditional project management software. Tasks were assigned, timelines tracked, and milestones reported.

But over time, several issues emerged:

• Pilots varied widely in scope, uncertainty, and success criteria
• Project tools emphasized delivery, not learning or decision-making
• Success metrics were often defined late — or not at all
• Leadership lacked portfolio-level visibility across pilots
• Teams struggled to answer a simple question: What should we do next?

As pilot activity grew, executives asked:

• Which pilots are truly worth scaling?
• Which should be stopped — and why?
• How do we compare pilots consistently across teams and vendors?

The organization realized that project management was necessary — but not sufficient.

Why Project Management Tools Fell Short

Project management software is designed for predictable work:

• Defined scope
• Known deliverables
• Clear timelines
• Binary outcomes (done / not done)

Innovation pilots are fundamentally different:

• Outcomes are uncertain by design
• Learning is as important as delivery
• Decisions must be made before “completion”
• Success depends on evidence, not just progress

As we’ve explored previously, traditional tools are excellent at telling teams what happened, but they struggle to guide what should happen next. This gap became more pronounced as pilots accumulated across business units.

The Shift: Purpose-Built Pilot Portfolio Management

Rather than forcing innovation pilots into generic workflows, the organization adopted a purpose-built pilot portfolio management approach.

The goal was not better task tracking.
It was better decisions across the entire pilot lifecycle.

This shift introduced several critical changes.

Defining Success Before Pilots Began

Instead of retroactively assessing results, teams were required to define success upfront:

• Clear KPIs and performance thresholds
• Value hypotheses and forecasted ROI
• Decision gates for scale, pivot, or stop

This reframed pilots as managed investments, not side projects.

Governing All Pilots as a Portfolio

The organization ran multiple types of pilots:

• Vendor pilots with startups and technology partners
• Internal pilots testing new processes or capabilities

Pilot portfolio management created a single system to:

• Apply consistent evaluation criteria
• Compare pilots objectively
• Track progress across stages
• Surface risks and dependencies early

Leadership finally had visibility across the entire pilot landscape.

Embedding Decision Gates, Not Just Milestones

Instead of measuring only progress against tasks, pilots were reviewed at defined decision points:

• Continue
• Pivot
• Pause
• Stop
• Scale

These gates ensured that evidence — not inertia — drove outcomes.

The Outcome: From Task Tracking to Strategic Control

Within months, the organization saw clear improvements:

• Portfolio-level visibility across all pilots
• Faster, more confident decisions
• Earlier identification of pilots unlikely to scale
• Better resource allocation across innovation initiatives
• Stronger executive confidence in innovation investments

Most importantly, pilots stopped drifting.

They either progressed with intent — or exited with clarity.

What our customer said...

“Project management helped us stay organized, but it didn’t help us decide. Moving to pilot portfolio management gave us a way to compare experiments, learn faster, and make clear calls on what to scale and what to stop.”

— VP of Innovation

Why This Matters for Innovation Leaders

As innovation programs mature, the challenge shifts.

It’s no longer about running pilots —
it’s about governing them at scale.

Project management tools focus on execution.
Pilot portfolio management focuses on learning, decisions, and outcomes.

That distinction is what allowed this organization to:

• Treat pilots as strategic assets
• Reduce noise and duplication
• Build a repeatable path from experimentation to scale

Final Thought

Innovation doesn’t fail because teams can’t deliver projects.

It fails when organizations can’t decide which experiments deserve continued investment.

By moving beyond project management to purpose-built pilot portfolio management, this enterprise transformed pilots from isolated experiments into a disciplined, decision-driven portfolio.

That’s what makes innovation scalable.

About Traction Technology

Traction Technology helps enterprise innovation teams bring structure and consistency to how ideas, emerging technologies, and innovation projects are evaluated, prioritized, and scaled.

Recognized by Gartner as a leading Innovation Management Platform, Traction Technology applies Traction AI to innovation decision-making — helping global enterprises reduce risk, improve alignment, and move initiatives from experimentation to execution with confidence.

Explore how Traction Technology supports Pilot Management with its Traction Platform

“By accelerating technology discovery and evaluation, Traction Technology delivers a faster time-to-innovation and supports revenue-generating digital transformation initiatives.”
— Global F100 Manufacturing CIO

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