The Secret to Digital Transformation - What I talk About, When I Talk About Digital - Part 5

Introduction

So here we are, at the end of this series of blogs, so I'm going to wrap it up nicely and send it home to mamma via an awful click-bait title. But firstly, a huge thanks to those who have suffered through it all, as I realise that it's not the shortest of blogs. Secondly, these are my opinions, not those of my employer.

What I realised the other day, is that I have learned a huge amount in the process of writing this blog and discussing it with people; but in true Agile style, I learned even more working in a Digital team and going through the various stages of acceptance of Digital Transformation into my life (which are almost like the stages of loss, only snarkier). I'm thankful to have been through that process and to have had the time and space to write about it in my own style.

It is easy to dismiss the “Digital Revolution” as being “buzzwordy”, I did just that and in my hubris, it showed a level of conceit. I looked down my nose at it, and for that I apologise to both those I worked with and to myself for behaving in a disappointing way. The reality is that Digital rounds out the picture of delivering systems in a modern setting. In my opinion, it is a genuine sea-change in how we design, build and release software.

But what does it all mean? I’m not a fan of unrelated quotes, but maybe the following is more salient than it is new age:

“What is the meaning of life? Ah life, the head asks the questions, the heart has the answers!” - Alejandro Jodorowsky - Chilean, writer, artist, poet and film-maker

If the head is Enterprise/traditional architecture, Digital is the heart, and if you – as the enterprise brain – ask the right answers of the user/customer heart, you’ll find the true meaning of the business. Let the head do too much thinking and you’ll try to second-guess yourself out of business, but allowing the heart to indulge in endless and unstructured fantasy would be just as dangerous. As with most things in life, the middle path provides the sweet spot. Don’t use one of the two alone as you'll be prone to being unbalanced, use them in concert.

How should Digital Transformation be approached?

Technology alone doesn’t deliver money, unless you’re mining for bitcoins (that’s a different story and if you want more darkweb crypto-currency talk, meet me by the fire escape in 10 minutes and bring your PGP keys). Digital Transformation, being a non-technical approach, attempts to turn systems on their heads by addressing what’s really important to the business, which is that they usually want to make money, and they typically do this by:

• Delivering a product or service that the customer wants/needs
• Deliver it on time (for the market)
• Deliver it consistently
• Making it future-proof, which means enabling and embracing change

None of the above are unique to technology, but as technology is advancing, its complexity means that extra care must be taken when delivering a system. So, if software, process and technology aren't important, what is? Data and people. I only put data first, because without good data, even the right people cannot save your business. If you don’t capture it accurately now, you can’t do it later. Starting your "Digital journey" by looking at people and data is a great way to start.

Recognise your Organisation will Need to Change

You cannot deliver a Digital Transformation without a) Reviewing and evolving your organisation from the ground up or b) Creating an "organisation within an organisation" to enable digital delivery. Digital collapses business process, if you're unwilling to do this, you WILL fail.

You must also recognise, as part of this, that just slapping the word "Digital" over everything and trying to do user-driven design is not Digital Transformation. You should consult part three of this series for more details if you're unsure of this.

Do User-driven Service Design, but do it with Vision!

Don’t just collect a Borges’ list of user needs, help create a vision for an actual product that means something. Every Scrum project needs a product vision that acts as the project’s true north, sets the direction and guides the Scrum team. It is the overarching goal everyone must share – Product Owner, Scrum Master, team, management, customers and other stakeholders. As Ken Schwaber puts it:

“The minimum plan necessary to start a Scrum project consists of a vision and a Product Backlog. The vision describes why the project is being undertaken and what the desired end state is.” - [ https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/january/the-product-vision]

It’s tempting to throw out the learnings of an earlier way of working to embrace the new one, but that’s done at great peril. The above quote holds true, just because you have a vision doesn’t mean you aren’t interested in users’ needs. Quite the opposite, both can be moulded until an equilibrium is reached, I’d call that “being Agile”. See, now we start to strip away dogma, and make Agile truly agile again!

Design with Data and Analytics in Mind

One way of approaching it, and is entirely in line with the Digital mindset is to become data-driven. One of the GDS Design Principles hits the nail square on the head:

Design with data

In most cases, we can learn from real world behaviour by looking at how existing services are used. Let data drive decision-making, not hunches or guesswork. Keep doing that after taking your service live, prototyping and testing with users then iterating in response. Analytics should be built-in, always on and easy to read. They’re an essential tool.

[https://www.gov.uk/design-principles#third]

Data Enables the Journey

A data-driven world enables delivering an end-to-end journey. From a customer experience, it’s not how quickly the organization answers the phone but how quickly the customer can complete an order. Customer experience and satisfaction is centred around the fact that the customer doesn’t need multiple conversations with the organization; meeting needs can be done quickly and done once.

In a data-driven world, an organization can rethink many of its old assumptions. When Airbnb, for example, broke away from processes and focused on data, it realized the company doesn’t need to own physical assets (hotels). Aspects of a hotel business that made it competitive in a process-driven world get stood on their head in a data-driven world. People who have apartments in great locations are a different option than hotels and provide different value in the customer experience.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterbendorsamuel/2017/07/21/the-power-of-digital-transformation-in-a-data-driven-world/#1c7e9fd13f2c]

Data Enables Speed

To the business, in today’s market, it’s usually speed. Being late to market means you may as well not bother.

Speed is the new currency in business. Organizations must be quick to deliver against customer and employee needs or expectations in a competitive market. There’s no shortcut in digital transformation to achieve this speed. But as an organization drives deeper and deeper into a software-defined, automated world, it moves faster and faster because the important data and associations in the data emerge. That then allows transformation of what the business does.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterbendorsamuel/2017/07/21/the-power-of-digital-transformation-in-a-data-driven-world/#1c7e9fd13f2c]

In a process-driven world, processes must be routine and allow consistently getting the defined result. Digital transformation transforms processes through data, making it faster and more reliable to focus on what needs to be done instead of getting trapped in the effort of getting processes right.

Data Enables Change

In rethinking old assumptions about a business, we can get to where value or opportunities emerge in different places than in a process-defined world.

Another example of rethinking assumptions in a data-driven world is the human resources processes. Companies built their employee experience around HR processes that serve employees such as payroll, benefits, employee communications, recruiting. When we move to a digital, automated experience, the data places the focus on the employee experience. Rather than asking what the organization does for an employee, the data show needs and what is going on with the employee.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterbendorsamuel/2017/07/21/the-power-of-digital-transformation-in-a-data-driven-world/#1c7e9fd13f2c]

Practical Implementation

A good friend and colleague, Craig Gulliver, has a curious technique he has been working on. When replacing a system, where possible slap as much logging and analytics on it as possible and let it sit for a while. Then engage Data Scientists to tell the programme how a system is being used, how long it takes people to get through that process and where processes are being abandoned (due to deficiencies in the flow).

You should consider it the next time you’re asked to work on requirements for a replacement system.

Combine Delivery Strength and Digital Transformation

Where do we currently sit?

I’m lucky to work at an organisation that have a proven history and a great reputation in (amongst other things):

• Delivering Agile projects at the Enterprise scale, pretty much like no other software services provider on Earth!
• Working at the Enterprise Architecture level within an organisation
• Providing Business Analysis in a more traditional top-down disciplined way
• Providing "User-Driven" design through our "Service Design" techniques
• Designing and delivering world-class Data Science solutions
• Working in Digital Transformation programmes, not only as "do-ers" but as thought leaders and those forming the ways of working

Most of the recipe for a Digital Transformation is in the above points, but in order to find balance in an organisation, there should be a quadrumvirate of Agile Delivery, Digital Transformation, Corporate Strategy and Architecture, which is a subtle extra on top of what many companies already focus on. Obviously, corporate strategy must come from within, but both internal teams as well as external suppliers can help an organisation in tying this all up!

So, What Does this All Mean for You, the Digital Organisation?

The figure below shows where we have skills or influence:

Scaled Agile must change – Agile must take on the working practices of Digital Transformation and provide a safe, no-surprises wrapper around it. Do not throw out the risk averse practices we worked so hard to engender, but allow for digital innovation and bottom-up design.

Enterprise Architecture must change –Architecture must change and mature to deliver measurable business value against the youthful exuberance of Digital.

The figure above shows a very "top-down" approach to architecture, which isn't compatible with Digital Transformation without some changes. We must help our companies/clients tear down ivory towers and unshackle developers while forming new alliances so people work together, rather than at odds over a frustrating divide. Speacking of which, siloes, they need to go too!

We should get even more serious about Data and Analytics – As I’ve attempted to show throughout this journey, Data is now more important than ever and difficult to fix in retrospect. Greater people than me can better explain what we would need to do here (hint, somebody write more about this please!).

We need to fully and deeply understand Digital Transformation – In any market, you’re either a leader or a follower. Without this deep understanding, we’re the followers and they don’t score the winning touchdown and go on to save the universe from Max von Sydow, no sir.

In Closing

I think that there’s a huge opportunity for all of us in this (suppliers, partners and internal teams), I don’t believe many (if any) technology suppliers or organisations are taking a holistic view of Corporate, Agile, Enterprise and Digital and are able to provide insight in to how to deliver to harness them all. In an ideal world, we would extend our collective approach to provide tools and techniques in the Digital Transformation world. If you’re already mature or a best-in-breed for Agile delivery, including at the Enterprise scale, why wouldn’t you become a leader in this newer way? Let’s face it, Digital isn’t going anywhere soon and it deserves to succeed!

We already have the excellent Service Design work in many companies providing much of the user-facing part of Digital Delivery and, as seen in the GDS Service Manual, Agile is at the heart of delivering a Digital programme. As a community, we’re not far, in fact we’re frustratingly close, to becoming competent in this space. And you know what? That’s very exciting… In my opinion, this all means that, like we as an industry took basic Agile and made it work at scale, we can take the bull by the horns and STOP our programmes being part of that 65-80% that fail.

Obviously, in proposing this as part of your offering, it’ll be a huge change for the organisations in question (be they your own or a client) and may be one of the hardest sells when having to take legacy systems, teams and processes into consideration. But, as they say, fortune favours the brave.

With that, I’m done, but If you enjoyed this series, please share it. I know Digital, in many ways, isn’t as sexy as Blockchain or Machine Learning, but it’s the fabric for a new way of transforming organisations into ones who deliver world-class, user-centric software.