What I talk about, when I talk about Digital - Part 1
This is the first in a series of five parts as it's a challenging topic, so the TL;DR crew may just want to look away now.
Introduction
Apologies in advance for the potentially DRY subject matter, but this is a topic of some interest to me and hopefully at least one person may find it interesting, even if it's only me in retrospect, gazing wistfully over the tatters of my career.
For some reason, Digital Transformation/Delivery has really piqued my interest. I think it's mainly because:
- It's upon me (and my colleagues), in many of my engagements
- Not many people have bothered to explain it properly (or at all)
- Fewer still seem to know how to implement it or know how to spot the problems as they arise
I've found that overloading words is a dangerous path to go down, you confuse the masses. The word digital is not new, yet the Digital revolution is now upon us. We've all heard of Digital, people put it on their job titles, their department titles, even into their core business strategies. But, I'm not convinced many people even know what it means in context beyond "not analogue" and "may involve computers".
Unfortunately for those who have it thrust upon them, the term has some specific meaning in design and business transformation terms and this aspect is rarely, if ever explained to those in the trenches, leading to a lot of confusion and even derision.
In order to debunk some myths and open up some cans of worms, I'm going to attempt to cover over the next five parts:
- What is Digital (at a high level) and how its outlook is different to a more traditional approach
- The GDS Principles and Service Design Manual, how they're applied within the Government and the forces in play that may cause friction in that process
- My observations on real implementations of Digital Transformation, behaviours and structures, including some interesting/surprising industry statistics
- What I believe is causing some of the pain points in adopting a Digital approach
- How people, working in a Digital environment, can help be agents of change... For the better; and that means you!
Caveat: Although I will be critical of the status quo, don't worry, this isn't a series intended to bash Digital, quite the opposite, I think it's visionary in its aspirations, just currently maybe not quite mature in its implementation.
The Basics of Digital
Believe it or not, Digital Transformation has been around for at least 15 years (that’s as far back as I bothered looking), but it has gathered a lot of momentum over the last three or so, especially in governmental departments. If you've worked on anything inside the UK Gov or the NHS in the last few years, this will not have escaped your attention. I've seen it met with utter enthusiasm and vigour, but also with scepticism (which results in people "gaming the system").
From my own observations, “Digital vs Traditional Enterprise” is largely analogous to “Centralised vs Decentralised” (which I'll riff on in a later part) but, before I go at it full-tilt, it’s worth answering the question, “what are the objectives of Digital Transformation”? The DIAL (The Digital Impact Alliance) provides an interesting take on it and if you ignore “in the developing world", it holds for most Digital Transformations:
“Increase the speed, number, and quality of services provided to more people at an affordable price in the developing world
Improve access to, understanding of and use of data for development in public service delivery and development programs
Foster adoption by governments, funders, and other implementers of evidence-based good practices when they fund, design, and deploy digital services.”
[ https://digitalimpactalliance.org/what-we-do/]
There's an excess of often inconsistent or biased material out there, but invariably number one on the list is the Customer/User need/experience, and this is how Digital and Enterprise differ in people’s perception in the following ways:
Enterprise:
- Top-down
- Business focussed
- Lots of governance
- Waterfall delivery
- Functionality over technology
- Slow to deliver
- Single-vendor/integrator environment
Digital:
- Bottom up
- User-driven
- Light-Touch governance
- Agile
- Technology and results focussed
- Quick to deliver
- Multi-vendor environment
Note the emphasis on perception, not all of the above is true, especially the "waterfall delivery" part. Another thing to note in the above, is that you can be Agile, but not Digital, but the inverse doesn’t really hold.
Moving to this kind of bottom-up, user centric model involves change, which can’t just be gaffer-taped over the top of an existing enterprise... No, that’s where the “transformation” aspect comes in, but what does that mean?
“Transformation is a whole scale change to the foundational components of a business: from its operating model to its infrastructure. What it sells, to whom and how it goes to market. A transformation programme touches every function of a business
Businesses often build and develop new products and services, move into new markets, merge with or sell to competitors, or swap components from their value chain to gain competitive advantage, but none of these things are necessarily transformative.
Businesses don't transform by choice because it is expensive and risky. ”
[ https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/nov/21/digital-transformation]
The bottom line in the quote above contains the kicker, the key impedance mismatch between what things like the Government Digital Services (GDS) Service Design Manual aspires to and reality.