From planning to chaos to future in a second

Planning

In beginning of January 2020, I started my new employment as CIO for Live it experiences. My first two weeks of introduction went smooth and I collected my findings. My feeling about the company was like a startup that had stopped in startup mode and was left behind in IT. My focus forward was at the time to set our digital roadmap to bring the company to 2020.

Digital transformation cover an entire organisation and its processes, which mean that you need to talk to all employees. You need them to understand the "why" to win them over to your side but also to uncover what is missing. As a CIO you need to talk both in business terms and technology terms but mostly in a language that everybody can understand and relate to. I started to talk about my vision with digital transformation in meetings but mostly at coffee breaks. In this way I tested my thoughts with a fail fast philosophy but also gained lot of insights. I did this with the management team and all the departments within the company. All the insights have been of value and input to our digital roadmap.

First out was the move to Microsoft Office 365, and we had discussed to plan this in Q1.

Chaos

My planning was interrupted by this virus, know as covid-19, and still effect us all at this moment. From a structured way it became chaos in a day. Our government decided to tell everybody to work from home. Our company wasn't ready for remote work in large scale. Of course some employees hade Skype and Slack but not all of our employees had these tools. The management team turned to IT for help. With few moments of thinking and discussion with my team, We told the management team that we can move to Microsoft Teams and Office 365 in two days. Without budget and business case I convinced the management team to give me permission to start the move to the cloud.

Thank god for trial versions of Office 365.

Future in a second

The move to the Office 365 was started in a flash and the rollout was one of the best rollout I have been experienced during my short career in IT. In just two days we had all employees in Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, in one team and without mailboxes and files of course. Less than a week later all the employees have done our introduction to Microsoft Teams and our new way of collaboration. The introduction was held in Microsoft Teams about Microsoft Teams as tool.

As I write this article we have migrated all mailboxes and files. My team and I have proved that IT can respond quickly to business changes and have the knowledge to be the business partner to help the company transform for the future. All employees love Microsoft Teams and the way of working. I can't wait to do the next step in this digital transformation.

About author

My name is Christopher and I have been working with companies and organisations that needs help to gear up for the last 11 years. I have had positions as developer, IT manager, CDO and CIO.