As transformation consultant, I see one bandwagon that every business big and small wants to embark is the “Digital Transformation”. As I see a lot of misunderstanding about the digital transformation (“it’s internet right? ““It means go paperless, isn’t it?”) , I am hereby taking an effort to share a series of posts starting with this one on some basic history and how you can steer your organization to be more digital over time. The key aspects we will touch upon will be as follows
Welcome to the next session on the Digital Transformation. We saw in the previous article the importance of organizations needing to be digitally capable in the era of digital disruptions. Digital transformation presents problems that are complex and undefined. So, using Design Thinking to embrace your organization’s digital transformation helps tackle these problems by using a fluid, flexible, hands-on approach to interact with consumers and come up with solutions.
I am the first to admit that there is a whole lot of publications and formal certifications on agile coaching but I feel it always helps to hear some real-life stories and insights and hence sharing my own insights as an agile transformation consultant and coach on how one can be an effective coach.
In my experience it is the tolerance of organizations to embrace failures as opportunities for growth and learning, which hold equal or more weight than the successes that we also need to sustain. I have had the pleasure to be involved on numerous ART launches and implementations, all of which made continual improvement towards increasing predictability, alignment around value and customer centricity, and limiting WIP at both the Team and Program constructs.
Business Agility is today a term that is fast becoming the need of the hour to survive in the disruptions caused by technology like broadband or natural like pandemic!
Now we all know a lot about why we need Business Agility but what is not well understood is the success of agility goes beyond strategy and is heavily dependent on execution at all levels.
Business Agility can be defined as the capability of an organization to compete and be successful in the digital age by rapid response to changes and new opportunities with creative business solutions.
Some major industry trends that have become eye-openers to the business world on the need to have business agility to survive are
In these days of pandemic, lot of jobs are lost and many tenured folks are seeking career changes in areas that are in demand and turn to agile as one obvious choice.
Typical concerns of anyone who is stepping into a new area is as follows
Per the Agile Manifesto “Working software is the primary measure of progress” and in order to measure progress we need metrics.
As an agile coach and practitioner, I respect the relevance of metrics at all levels from teams to programs to portfolios. However please be do not fall victim to the “street light effect” which means we tend to look for data where it can be easily found but does not have much value to the outcome or impact like number of lines of code, team velocity etc. that are most of the time mere numbers that does not help with real outcome .
Whether it’s cloud computing, big data, outsourcing, or the internet of things, keeping up with IT consulting trends and practices can seem daunting. The same goes for business consulting, how do you know which trends and practices are best fit for your business?
As a leader, the decision to become agile and how to get started is often overwhelming as this is a major change that needs to be well planned and executed.
Please remember that agile is by definition an exploratory approach that encourage hypotheses driven action that gets evaluated and based on results course corrections made as needed.
