Digital transformation: An art of transforming teams

"When digital transformation is done right, it's like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.” - George Westerman

When we talk about “Digital Transformation” projects, first thought that comes is around the changing ‘Technology’ - But all transformation projects are more about the people involved than the technology. It is about how your teams adapt to the changing technology, collaborate on different perspectives, ability to unlearn-and-learn, and match the pace on evolving ways of working with rapidly shifting market expectations. Once you master the art of transforming teams, transforming systems effectively becomes a by-product of the same.

Before we talk about what to do, let's discuss a little on what not to do

A journey can lead to destination or devastation - depending on how well prepared you were. Transformation journey is no different - if it’s carefully planned and executed, it embraces the change; but when done wrong, it makes everything worse including the current solution. So few things to keep in mind before you sign-up for a transformation project:

• Don’t jump steps of transformation - It evolves with time, and prioritise on problem statement changes with current phase you’re in.
• Don't just plan for destination but also focus on the journey - Have the plan from start to finish, but detail out quarterly deliverables with reviewed assessment on current state and business expectations.
• Don't procrastinate on decision making - Faster decisions are key to faster execution. Have clear understanding on where short term decisions can be made, which are scalable to long term decisions when needed.
• Don't have disparate communications on team's objective & goals - Communications play a crucial role in any program; more so in big transformations. Team should have the clarity of goals, awareness of common objectives and move together on an unified roadmap. Everyone should work towards the final impact and not just within their craft/ squad boundaries.
• Don't dilute the program progress updates - define optimised processes and maintain clear accountability [if possible use DRI model] to provide status clarity, faster decision making and ensuring transparency of updates/ risks at all levels [with optimised processes and tools implementation], during all phases of a project.

How to transform teams to transform systems

"You don't hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills." -Simon Sinek

When we think of transforming teams, its about attitude transformation and how to approach the problem by all at any given phase. Once you have a team with well aligned transformation mind-set and clarity of goals - you have the strategy to succeed, rest is all tactical execution over defined strategy.

As said by Norman Schwarzkopf — 'The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.' Plan well for execution, execute well for impact.

So do we have one strategy through out the transformation? Yes and No!

Yes, we have a high level deciding factors per strategy to help navigate in edge situations, like:

• What is the team's one unified vision?
• What to optimise for - Business or Technical excellence?
• What to prioritise - Speed or Perfection?
• What will be the GTM strategy?
• What is stakeholder management and communication plan?

No, as we may have situational changes happening globally and what held true a year back might not support your key strategical decisions anymore.

So frequently review the strategy and re-map with present priorities.

What is that attitude shift we should seek and when?

Transformation can take multiple years or months, all depends on size of the system to be transformed - but approach to transform can stay same.

Think of it as building a home, ground up. You will plan for end-to-end implementation i.e. transformation on an empty land to beautiful/ efficient home. But you won't buy furniture before you build the rooms !! So, let's phase it out -

Phase 1: Build "The Team" and converge on common goals, roles & responsibilities, ways of working. Validate the hypothesis with a MVP.        

Pre-Requisite: Your transformation program is exec approved, stakeholders aligned and expected outcome is clear (team's vision), with the plan and it is backed with research data points/ experiments etc.

Objective: Validate your theory and build the required team across different crafts (Product/ Engineering/ Program/ Design) and levels.

Outcome:

• Hired and onboarded the complete crew for this transformation program. Bring everyone onboard to one common vision/ goal.
• Decision on migration strategy of transformed system: lift & shift (at par systems) or refactor (improved beyond parity).
• Define & align the playbook for teams across multiple digital transformation phases: Requirement Analysis -> Define -> Design -> Code -> Test -> Deploy -> Migrate -> Maintain
• Create relevant processes and tools framework for the same: defined processes should enable faster decision making, in-time risk mitigation and dependency management.
• KRs (Key results) at this point should be focused around validating the hypothesis with a MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

Phase 2: Execute accountability driven, bottoms up ways of working with ownership clarity of required action at each level and deliver on a pivotal transformed journey, crossing the threshold for point of no-return.        

Pre-Requisite: Your team is working towards the common goal across craft with defined roles, responsibilities, processes and tools. End goal has been validated with a MVP, and not just a hypothesis anymore.

Objective: Deliver first and foremost transformed capability (beyond MVP) and move from hypothesis to substantiated execution of program.

Outcome:

• Work breakdown done at squad level with accountability of delivery defined for each stage
• Joined the dots - connected how the smallest piece of work will add to the bigger deliverables.
• Consistent and transparent communication channels are formed to assess the progress and decide on next steps (at each level).
• Delivered on one or more key capabilities which confirms transformation program is on the right path and ensures the program feasibility beyond the point of no return.
• Stakeholder/ Customer communications are in line with changes made across existing & transformed systems.
• KRs at this point should be around delivering most critical journey end-to-end to get started with migrations once it is available.

Phase 3: Initiate migrations and onboarding on delivered journeys, while in parallel deliver on other foundational capabilities enabling 100% migrations & onboarding.        

Pre-Requisite: Transformation program has crossed the threshold and validated with key journeys availability on transformed system.

Objective: Deliver foundational system which is migration ready. Migrate limited customer groups to assess the impact and growth.

Outcome:

• Migration started on key capabilities available on transformed system. As more and more releases happen on transformed system, migrations are scaled respectively.
• Stakeholder/ Customer communications are in line with changes made across existing & transformed systems. Migrated customers gets required operational support.
• Data analysis on usage/ customer experience and business continuity are in line with expected impact.
• Reviewed and reformed processes/ ways of working, reacting retrospectively on areas of improvement.
• Delivered the critical capabilities to the system, unlocking end-to-end customer journeys without the edge cases.
• KRs targeted here are beyond capability/ journey releases, but also transformed system monetary benefits and growth prospects.

P.S. Phase 2 and Phase 3 are close progressional steps and depending of program's size it can be considered a part of same phase delivery (with multiple internal milestones) as well.

Phase 4: Migrate 100% customers on transformed system and start new customer onboarding on transformed system only. Archive old systems and enable all type of customer sales via newly transformed system.        

Pre-Requisite: Transformed system ready with foundational capabilities, enabling majority migrations and customer shift on newly transformed system.

Objective: Migrate 100% to transformed systems, enable all sale channels/ customer channels via transformed systems.

Outcome:

• All capabilities required to migrate 100% to transformed system are available in transformed system.
• All capabilities required to open multiple sales/ customer channels are available on transformed system.
• Data analysis on usage/ customer experience and business continuity are in line with expected impact.
• Operational support & sales/ user training extended on transformed systems.
• 100% migration done from old system to transformed system.
• Customer Onboarding and sales enabled via transformed system.
• Old system is now archived/ shut down and not exposed to customers anymore.
• KRs here are focused towards 100% migrations and performance of transformed system w.r.t business expectations, customer experience, ease of use, growth rate and market sentiment.

Transformation program is successfully over, what next?

It is just the beginning of the journey for transformed system. It is important that post migration, transformed systems have no/ limited tech debt to start with and constantly getting validated for stability - once stabilised, program shifts from transformation to BAU mode where incremental improvements and operational reliability is critical.

Ensure the teams are well aligned with the revised goals now - which is to maintain and grow over the transformed system. This will have its own pace, priorities and approach; which will mostly get revised each quarter. Before wrapping up a transformation program, make thorough assessments on its impact, effectiveness and post-transformation plan.

Compendium

While there is never just one way to reach destination, same way transformation is all about the journey and destination is the by product - where journey can be different in different circumstances. I have listed what in my experience is an organic journey of a transformation program. I would love to hear [drop a comment] on what you think of this and what other progression patterns are commonly observed in transforming teams to transform systems.