All that Glitters is not Gold
Years ago I worked with a client who had invested millions in introducing new technology and systems, and promised their board significant savings, faster processing, increased earnings. Despite the technological success they were not realizing the improvements in efficiency and throughput they planned for. They were frustrated and at a loss to explain why, or how to fix it.
A quick assessment gave them some answers. It turns out that they had done a heroic job in terms of technology planning and application design. But technology is only part of a solution…and it’s the easier part. What they hadn’t done was set up a governance structure to set and manage goals for their transformation, evaluated the impact of the new system on either the user community or IT roles and processes, or most importantly, they hadn’t established a human change management plan to bring the organization into the program and secure buy-in.
Without any of this, they wound up with shiny new systems that were implemented on top of an organization that was ill-prepared to consume them. Users were in outdated roles, relying on old processes, and to the extent they could, were trying to work around the new technology. The result was increased cost, with little, if any benefit.
What Makes Change Transformational?
There are many valuable improvements that IT can implement which are not necessarily transformational. They do not significantly impact the organization, its roles, or its processes. They might just do the same things faster or better or more securely; they might enable conformity to new regulations, or produce new data and reports. These kinds of projects should still be business-centric and well-communicated, but are not impactful enough to warrant the type of governance that a transformational program would.
A program might be transformational if it:
- introduces significantly new products or services that will require new or changed roles to support, either in IT or the business community
- introduces technology that changes how people do their jobs, or adds or eliminates roles
- requires organizational realignment or redesign in order to be successful
- is integral to achieving an organization’s goals
Components of Transformation
Successful transformation requires focus on five key areas: strategy, organization, process, services, and technology.
Strategy
Strategy definition should start with business goals, which then feed IT goals and trickle down from there
Most transformational programs have direct or indirect goals to drive growth, improve efficiency, reduce cost, or increase agility. Key to achieving a program’s goals is to establish them in quantifiable terms. Cost, processing time, and growth are relatively easily quantifiable. A more challenging goal to quantify is organizational capability, and this is where we suggest a maturity model that enables an organization to asses its current level of capability and set target maturity over time as its transformation progresses.
Organization
This is where the ongoing governance models, organization design/redesign, sourcing & staffing models, and Human Change Management get planned and implemented.
Process
The identification of new or changed processes occurs in this domain. Process development is integrally tied to technology due to the automation potential of processes, and to organization due to the impact of organization on process and the impact of process on roles.
Services
The services to be offered as a result of this transformation have to be defined or amended. The entire life cycle of each service should be defined in a service portfolio. Service definitions should include descriptions of the services, service components, service dependencies, cost, and responsible parties.
Technology
This is the domain of transformation that IT is the most aware of and comfortable with. In this domain technology goals are set in support of business and IT goals, technology plans and architectures are designed and implemented in concert with the other elements of the transformation project.
Tying all of these elements together is transformation governance, which encompasses program management. Many large scale transformations stand up a Transformation Office in order to give the transformation the resources and visibility needed for a successful transformation.