Digital Transformation What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation involves using digital technologies to redesign a process or infrastructure to become more efficient or effective. Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. The important aspect about digital transformation is that there is no single, simple solution that can dramatically solve every problem. Transforming the way how a company works with technology tomorrow depends entirely on how it is working with technology today.

Why Digital Transformation is important?

What really happens in a Digital Transformation environment?

A genuine digital transformation project involves fundamentally rethinking and redesigning business models and processes, rather than patching with or enhancing few traditional methods here and there. Digitalization, contrary to the popular belief is not simply the implementation of large amounts of technology systems and services. Digital transformation should create something new and different that might be an improvement to either productivity, process improvements or customer experience (for example by allowing customer self-service by giving multiple options), streamlining the supply chain, or using insights from data to offer new products.

The goals of Digital Transformations are usually:

• Customer experience

• Operational agility • Culture and leadership

• Workforce enablement

• Digital technology integration

• AI assisted decision making systems

• Automations

An important element of digital transformation is of course, technology. But often, it is about getting rid of outdated legacy processes and legacy technology and adopting new technology. It is also about enabling creativity and innovation. The new technologies are built using cloud architectures and approaches. It could be moving from traditional data centers to cloud or hybrid systems for infrastructure, it could be moving from monolithic to Microservices for Applications or it could be moving from Waterfall to Agile and DevOps for processes. Legacy solutions lack flexibility and carry a significant technology debt due to dated languages, databases and architectures and thus saving many dollars on maintenance of traditional infrastructure.

Who are all involved in Digital Transformation?

While emerging technology and redesigned processes are crucial, having the right skills on staff is essential to any digital transformation.

Software engineers, cloud computing specialists and product managers, scrum masters, Release managers remain key roles for companies seeking to roll out new products and services. DevOps leaders play an important role in software development by merging development with operations, enabling companies to continuously iterate software to speed delivery. In the current world, quick releases and upgrades mark the innovation.

Data scientists and data architects are also in high demand, as companies seek to obtain insights out of vast troves of data, and transformations lean increasingly on machine learning and artificial intelligence. The huge amount of data helps in data scientists to architect the relevant automation paths.

IT infrastructure support departments supporting business-wide transformations also require UX designers, digital trainers, architects, brand specialists, forensic analysts, information security experts, ethics compliance managers and digital workplace technology managers. Although IT will play an important role in driving digital transformation strategy, the work of implementing and adapting to the massive changes that go along with digital transformation falls to everyone. For this reason, digital transformation is also a people driven strategy and hence it is also a cultural change in the Organization.

What are the critical success factors of Digital Transformation?

What could be some of the challenges of Digital Transformation?

• Focus on Technology than Business or Customer : Teams focusing on latest technology and peer pressures drive companies to get carried away and tend to focus more on technology. There is a possibility that the business priorities or customer priorities may get ignored by this approach. Hence a good strategy with goals of Business and Customer interests in mind is essential. • Problems not addressed holistically: Digital Transformation is a journey and is a long-term strategy. It can be applied in stages to different Functions of the Organization, but the plan has to take into account the entire Organization as a whole and the strategy should be evolved with the long-term final goal into account.
  
• Data driven decision making process: The decision-making process should be based on the actual data, existing infrastructure, processes and customer feedback and what the company wants to achieve at the end of the transformation.
  
• Not getting buy in from all stake holders – Very often just few leaders tend to decide on the approach and go ahead with the transformation without taking along all the Functions of the organization into the decision making process or making them aware of the goals and results. Digital Transformation is a huge strategy and when implemented holistically in an organization it impacts everyone in the organization. Hence everyone needs to be informed about the activities, goals and expected results.
  

When does Digital Transformation gets completed?

The fact is, It doesn't. Many people make the mistake of thinking of digital transformation as a discrete project. True digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. Digital-led change is likely to go on forever. The word transformation implies that there is a beginning and an end. But in reality, there is a start but the end depends on where do you want to stop and more often it depends on how much do you want to spend because beyond a certain level the ROI may start decreasing.

SAFe© for Lean Enterprises is a knowledge base of proven, integrated principles, practices, and competencies for achieving business agility using Lean, Agile, and DevOps. As many of you know, it is based on seven core competencies namely:

1.        Lean-Agile Leadership

 

2.       Team and Technical Agility

 

3.       Agile Product Delivery

 

4.       Enterprise Solution Delivery

 

5.       Lean Portfolio Management

 

6.       Organizational Agility

 

7.       Continuous Learning Culture

Generally, there is a feeling among many that the SAFe concepts can only be used for Product Development that spans over multiple Agile teams. While it is true that the SAFe Framework and the concepts work definitely well for such an environment, what I have also seen is that it works equally well for organizations that would want to increase the productivity, quality, time-to-market, or better alignment of teams. In simpler words, SAFe works extremely well and is one of the best Frameworks to date to transform the Organization to be more Agile and to consistently improve their learning culture which SAFe calls as Relentless Improvement

                    

Practically SAFe Framework is best suited for any Organization that is looking for any or all of the following opportunities of improvement to:

 

1.        Enhance Collaboration of their cross-functional teams that are usually seen in silos.

 

2.       Align business goals to the individual project goals

 

3.       Deliver faster time-to-market

 

4.       Get a quick feedback on the deliverables

 

5.       Expect a greater transparency among the project teams as well as to the stake holders and to the Leadership Teams

 

6.       Fully utilize the concepts of Scrum, Xtreme Programming, Kanban, Structured ways of Root cause analysis to name a few

 

7.       Promote Innovation at all levels of the Organization

 

8.       Consistent approach to Planning, Execution and Delivery across the Organizational hierarchy.

Explore SAFe to experience an Organizational Change

         

While talking to a wonderful chef friend over the weekend, I got this idea of comparing a cook’s job to a Project Manager. Here it is.

What goes in Is what goes out !!

Every recipe needs specific set of ingredients of specific quality. The overall output of the end product depends on the quality of each of these ingredients.  If one of them is spoiled, the entire dish will have an impact of that, it could be the smell, taste or even the consistency.

Similarly, in Project Management, all the resources must be at the required performance level irrespective of them being human or other types of resources. The quality of the final product depends heavily on this. If the performance of any of the resources is not up to the mark, then it will pull the performance of the entire team and eventually the quality of the product.

There are always a few key ingredients to any recipe that gives the final and unique flavor to the final food item. Similarly, any Project will have few key resources that will have a greater impact on the final product, could be the Architect or Project Manager. These are the signature resources or ingredients.

Estimations and Complexity

Needless to say, if the ingredients are not measured before they are added to the recipe, then there is a lot that can go wrong, few possibilities are the taste, the final quantity, quality, amount of time needed to cook, etc.

In Project Management, if the resources or the work items are not properly estimated in the beginning of the Project, it can result in many things, delays, bad quality, escalations, sleepless nights, etc. The complexity of a Project does not scale linearly, meaning complex project need not take longer time to complete or complex projects may not need more resources just as similar to the fact that a tasty dish need not take much longer to prepare.

Specifications

The ingredients need to be made ‘context sensitive’, in the sense that for some preparations, for example, some seeds, may have to be ground coarsely for certain preparations and for others, they need to be chopped very finely, etc. Similarly, in Project Management some practices may have to be tailored to suit the context. “One size fits all’, does not work. For example, the practice or a process that works for an automotive product will not work for a Health Care Product.

Process, sequence, stages

There are certain things one needs to keep in mind while cooking. Every vegetable or ‘component’ that is added into the cooking process requires different treatment. For example, a soft vegetable may need a sh0orter cooking time and a harder one like a root or meat or fish may need a longer cooking, some may need low flame and others do not mind a big flame. There is always a sequence in cooking, you cannot skip the sequence. For example, to make a bread you must knead the dough, leave it for certain amount of time to make it rise before baking, you cannot do all together, if you do, you may make bread crumbs instead of bread !!

In Project Management, this is where the Process becomes an important aspect. The Project teams needs a certain sequence to go through different stages of the Project execution. For example, without a proper design and architecture of a project one may not get into the implementing or manufacturing the product. There are always certain tasks to be done before it moves to the next stage of the product development. If you skip, you may not get the right product, or you may not be there in that c0ompany to work on the next product!

At every stage of the cooking, there is a quality check, it could be by way of smell, color of the food or even the taste.

At every stage of the Project Management, there will be a quality check, it could be in terms of a review, Tests, demo or even a smaller version of the end product.

Requirement Changes

I am sure many who know the context of cooking will relate this, during the process of cooking, you my get to know there is an increase in the number of people arriving for the party or there are last  minute drop outs after knowing who the cook is!!

In Project management, there are always changes in the requirement, due to m

arket needs, budget constraints or technology changes.

Reworks!!

How many times would you have come across a situation that you need to change the name of the dish at the end of the cooking just because it did not turn out to be the dish of original intent, while you wanted a sweet dish, but it turned out to be a bit sour and you need to do few ‘adjustments’ to make it sweet again. These are the reworks!!

Needless to say, in Project Management, there can always be defects or the product does not work they way it was designed for. So you need to do reworks!! The only difference here is that, depending on the amount of rework, there will be a cost associated with that.

In both the scenarios, the less the rework is the more efficient you are.

Risks & Planning

Before starting to cook, a good cook will organize the ingredients in such a way that they are all measured and are available in the place easy to reach out. Also, you will need to ensure the availability of the cooking equipment like a blender, oven, cook-top, refrigerator, microwave, etc.

In Project Management, a good Project Manager will always plan the work in terms of their sequence, availability of the resources like development environments, tools, availability of experts for different domain components, etc.

In both scenarios, there is a huge potential for parallel paths. While some thing is getting cooked, there will be a parallel chopping work for the next stage and in Project Management some components may need to be sent for testing while others are being developed.

The Finale!

The final dish comes out with a great taste if the cook either does everything right first time or if the cook is an expert in handling the mistakes efficiently and makes the final dish to taste perfect. However, the cook becomes an expert cook either ways. The cook will feel definitely excited by the first approach of doing everything right first time.

A Project Manager can make a customer die hundred times before the final product is delivered but still make a fantastic product or make the entire customer experience wonderful from the beginning to end. The choice is open!!

At the end of reading this, I get a feeling that a good cook will be a good project manager or vice versa too!! Either ways I am good as long as long as the final dish and final product are great!!

Is Lean Six Sigma still relevant?

WHAT IS LEAN SIX SIGMA?

Lean Six Sigma was originally used in manufacturing scenario especially automotive and then later found its way into everywhere including Software development. It was successfully leveraged these proven processes to improve productivity, raise the bottom line, improve quality and enhance customer experience. While Six Sigma’s goals are to reduce defects and variation, Lean focusses on Value through relentless elimination of waste and acceleration in the velocity of processes. The Six in Six Sigma comes from the goal of fitting 6 standard deviations between the mean (average) and the nearest customer specification or target. Yes, this is all from Statistics!! To achieve Six sigma quality which is 99.9997%, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million operations. Anything is that is outside customer specification is a ‘defect’. To depict this pictorially, here is a small table.

Sigma Level Defects per million operations (DPMO) Yield

               

Whenever we start a new work, humans are usually at about 1.5 to 2 sigma level which translates to the fact the we make mistake 30-50% of the time. Sounds familiar? Humans that think they are perfect are at about 3 sigma level. However with simple checklists and mistake proofing, it can go upto 4 sigma level. With a determined set of processes, you can reach the six sigma level.

WHY IS THIS RELEVEANT TO BUSINESS?

There are few important and relevant benefits:

In summary if you see the 5 points above which are only few glimpses of what Lean Six Sigma can do, one can clearly see that all these are very relevant in the current business scenario of the Digital transformation, Agile, DevOps, etc.

Y

Many teams have just heard about the term Agile and the Organizations start executing Agile, hence there is no awareness and this is a perfect recipe for the failure of Agile and to say Agile is Bad.

Any change is often pushed back and Agile is no exception. There is also a feeling that a previously acquired leadership roles, disappear in Agile and it creates a level lower in the hierarchy.

Many Organizations start using Agile to show the rest of the competition that they are advanced in their execution models and all pojects in that Organization are executed in Agile model irrespective of a real need or not.

Agile assumes that there is a Product Owner that understands, directs and prioritizes the features and consolidates the fedback from demos and actual users to drive the product. If there is no need for such a structure, then Agile is Bad.

Very often there is a new terms that comes up as "Hybrid" which really means they are neither Agile nor Waterfall. If you follow the right structure of Waterfall and replace some of the terminologies from Agile, there will be a disaster. E.g Sprint 1 is Requirement, Spring 2 is Desigin, Sprint 3 is implemenmtation, etc.

Over the past couple of decades, organizations have successfully embraced the key principles of software engineering and has been able to turn that into a competitive advantage. Whether it was the early adoption of CMMI Model, the enthusiastic participation in the Agile movement or the recent large scale adoption of DevOps, software services organization across the globe have leveraged them to increase productivity and boost customer satisfaction. A close look at the operating margins of publicly listed IT companies show that they have been able to maintain their margins despite stagnant pricing and rising costs. This has been possible due to increased operational efficiencies.

Many of these adoptions, at least in part, have been driven by the customers’ need to have visibility and confidence in the software engineering, deployment and support processes. The customers’ IT organizations perceived these to be risk mitigation strategies for outsourcing IT functions that were critical to their business. Elaborate processes were written, and engineers were encouraged (read forced) to follow them in letter (and sometimes in spirit). The custodians of both the definitions and the implementation oversight was the Independent QA function called differently as SEPG, BPEG, QA, QF in these organizations.

           

Some organizations did their best to automate some of these processes with varying degrees of success – from infinitesimal all the way up to miniscule! Every organization is littered with the carcasses of the failed automation programs and their stories are strikingly similar – lip service from management, under resourced, lack of focus and a general apathy.

Changing nature of the workforce

But all this is in the throes of a fundamental change – not because of any newfound love for automation or customers’ demand but because of the changing nature of the engineer community. Some of these are incremental while a few are a generational change.

All around the world, the best engineers are going freelancing. While freelancing has been prevalent in the US and UK, engineers elsewhere had been happier working in a corporate environment. Maybe because of the job security or societal standing, being in a “job” meant much more than the work and the salary. In the last few years, this has started to change and the best engineers are willing to “go solo”. This frees them of day-to-day organizational pulls and pressures (read, politics) as well as making them as masters of their own time which they are investing in keeping themselves up-to-date. This trend is only going to increase and any organization that ignores this will not be able to leverage the high depth of talent available.

Work from Home will be the norm. There have now been numerous studies that have robustly demonstrated the increased productivity when people work from home (like this). Again, companies have paid lip service to this aspect over the last many years. But with a lack of clear measurement of outcomes, there is little movement on this. Given that companies have demonstrated more than 30% cost saving in tangible terms and with companies coming under margin pressure, the HR and finance team will register their supremacy over the delivery teams and Work from home will be a default option. Organizations like Crossover are betting big on this and promise a globally distributed workforce.

The world is moving faster and the Millennials like to complete their task as fast as possible. They are used to doing things without long training, constant supervision or nagging reminders. They expect systems to be intuitive, focused on the task to be completed with no overheads. Organizations whose processes and systems require entering data in multiple places, needing to look up 3 different portals and where data from past projects is presented as abstract guidelines will lose the attention of these go-getters. (Watch this space for more on the Millennials).

      

How are organizations adapting

The IT Services businesses exist because customers need predictable delivery and response times. So, how do organizations meet the customer demands while at the same time managing the changing workforce?