The 8 Step Check List To Digital Transformation
1. Executive Sponsorship, it needs to start there
In a recent study McKinsey highlighted that ‘Digital Transformation’ is still in its infancy but that the “Topple Rate’ increased by 40% in the last 50 years as digital technologies disrupted whole industries. They postulate, rightfully so in my opinion, that 95% of incumbent organizations must fully commit to a clear digital strategy and there is only one person in the organization with the klout to define and execute such an all in strategy and that is the CEO.
2. Align Business & IT
While it is tempting to by-pass IT who typically are very busy with ‘business as usual’ work, it is imperative that IT is involved from the start. This prevents your ‘transformation project’ simply becoming the N-th silo in your organization.
3. Think Two-Speed IT
The challenge is that IT teams spend vast majority of their resources (sometimes up to 90%) maintaining existing systems, leaving little room to innovate.
To balance these competing priorities, embrace what Gartner refers to as bi-modal IT, augmenting traditional IT services with Mode 2 capabilities.
According to Gartner, nearly 40 percent of CIOs have embraced bi-modal IT. Mode 1 is traditional; Mode 2 is exploratory and non-linear, emphasizing agility and speed.
4. Focus on Four P’s
When implementing bi-modal IT, focus on four key aspects to develop effective Mode 2 capabilities:
Portfolio: identify initiatives requiring a differentiated Mode 2 approach;
People: build small, cross-functional teams that collaboratively deliver digital applications;
Process: establish processes for iterative development and rapid deployment;
Platform: leverage modern cloud platforms that enable speed and agility.
5. Prioritize Your Application Projects
One way to know which projects need to get priority is to plot them on two simple axes. One is a customer axis (“Source of frustration”) and the other is your organization’s axis (“Organizational value”). Ideally you attack the high/high first, than high/low, than low/high.
In Oracle we use the customer journey mapping methodology to help our customers figure out what the list of possible projects is and how they map on these axes.
6. Cross-Functional Teams
One of my customers in the Netherlands, a retail bank, has adopted Spotify’s agile engineering culture. In fact they have taken it even further, building cross-functional teams that include both IT and business representatives.
This prevents waterfall style projects, lengthy gestation, excessive meeting needs and ensures close alignment between today’s digital business needs and digital IT capabilities delivered.
7. Embrace Agile and DevOps Practices
Because requirements for digital apps change fast and often, teams must work in short, iterative cycles, breaking projects into small components, creating functionality, releasing it and iterating continually based on user feedback. As you scale your digital innovation program, establish DevOps practices in order to enable continuous delivery.
8. Support People and Processes With the Right Platform
The reality is that you cannot ignore your current, heterogeneous IT landscape which most likely is still by-and-large on premise.
Ensure that your cloud application platform eliminates constraints associated with traditional development tools, delivering the speed and agility required for Mode 2 projects and fits in this landscape. Standards based, open and agile with an integrated PaaS development environment that is based on the same technical componentry.
Fonti: Mckinsey quarterly, Oracle, BCG