An Operational Guide to Digital Transformation for People in a Hurry

If you ever find yourself struggling to digitally transform your organization, business units, divisions, processes, assets & people, you might consider using the architecture of distributed #IoT software systems as your guide.

I know you’ve been converting things like documents, photos, sounds, numbers, blueprints & measurements from the physical world into the #Digital world for decades so I won’t belabor this point - you’re going to keep doing that.

From now on, you’re going to create everything digitally first. Okay, I won't hold it against you if you still scribble notes on airplane drink napkins or draw pictures of early designs on the back of paper place mats.

Also, don't confuse this endeavor with the business process re-engineering projects of the 1990s. You're not doing a straight port of your manual processes to digital equivalents. Just because Steve Jobs liked skeuomorphism doesn't mean your digital processes should reflect the old way of doing things.

Determine every way employees, assets, processes, departments & business units interact with each other as well as how they interact with customers, partners & suppliers in order to digitally convert those interfaces into #APIs.

Yes, I want you to create #RESTful APIs for every one of those interactions. These are your #DigitalThreads. Oh, and make sure you version them because an organization is always learning and evolving.

You need to model the properties, artifacts, behaviors, history & events that business units, departments, processes, assets & employees respond to in order to create compound #DigitalTwins to complete your #Digitalization.

Why "compound" digital twins? Because we're not just talking about atoms here. We're describing the complex and oftentimes hierarchical relationships that look more like molecules.

Your #DigitalTwins will run in a distributed platform that manages the #DigitalThreads connecting employees, assets, processes, departments, business units, customers, partners & suppliers.

At this point, your #DigitalTransformation should be in beta stage & your organization, with all its components, should come to life as a digital #organism that probably still needs to be debugged.

Notice how I just fast-forwarded through a multi-month or multi-year process? Becoming a #Digital #organization is going to take a while so be patient.

An important takeaway is that you’ve now digitally documented how every last aspect of how your #enterprise operates. No more reliance on tribal knowledge & the company memory issues you have due to employee turnover are solved.

Everything is made into #Software & connected via #DigitalThreads #streaming over #5G at a level no one has ever imagined. #DigitalTwins will collaborate with #people & each other via APIs, #apps & #analytics to run your business.

Terms like CI/CD & #DevOps will take on new meaning as they’re used to upgrade some or all of the #business as #developers make improvements. Scaling your business won’t necessarily mean #hiring new #employees anymore.

Instead, scaling might mean adding containers to a cloud-native infrastructure. This probably sounds as weird as the first time you heard you had to write a job description for #code performing Robotic Process Automation #RPA.

As your digitally transformed #organization matures, you’ll be able to determine which functions are best handled by #DigitalTwins & which ones require #human #creativity or unique abilities.

A new level of #disruptive #automation will sweep through. Don't go #dystopian on me. Like all the preceding #industrial revolutions, #Industry40 will create more #jobs than it eliminates. Lifelong #education is the key.

This process is a large mountain to climb & I’m sure you’ve heard hundreds of examples of what it means from other analysts. My definition is a bit more revolutionary because you shouldn't half-ass something this #transformative.

You're probably wondering, what's the payoff in making #Digital #transformation a reality? Hyper-efficiency, cost savings, no more role confusion, no more lost organizational #knowledge, & increased #revenue via digital scaling.

I hope this #tweetstorm I pasted into LinkedIn has been helpful in digitally transforming your #organization & how it operates with #people, processes, #machines & #connected #intelligence.

-Rob