Your Digital Transformation is Floundering? Revealing Why

Sorry folks, your efforts to move to the cloud, create CI/CD pipelines, or
centralize a data lake is not digital transformation. Nor are projects to
get your organization on Microsoft 365, establish unified communications, or
develop microservice architectures.

And watch out for vendors who are selling products that “deliver digital
transformation.”

These are all likely important technology investments and may constitute an
IT transformation. But I hold digital transformations at a higher bar.

Digital Transformations Change The Business Model

Digital transformations use culture, collaboration processes, and new
technologies to change the business model. They are led by transformation
leaders who recognize who you sell to today, what you are selling, how
products and services are sold, how they are fulfilled, and how customers
are serviced must evolve significantly from what made the organization
successful in the past.

To do this, most digital transformations start with market analysis and
understanding customer experiences. Nearly all digital transformations
require organizations to consider becoming data-driven and using analytics
to strategic advantage.

Planning and executing digital transformations requires a collaborative operating model, which is why practices like product management, agile,
devops, data science, and citizen development are critical in digital
transformations.

And getting leaders and employees to understand, participate, and drive
changes requires most organizations to adopt transformative cultures. It
entails challenging the status quo, asking questions, learning new skills,
adopting digital responsibilities, seeking inclusivity, promoting diversity,
and thinking globally.

Digital transformation almost always requires technology investments to
deliver new products, transform customer experiences, automate repetitive
tasks, integrate systems, and improve data quality. Some innovation
experiments will start as POCs, and hopefully, the organization is using
agile practices to deliver MVPs and enhancements.

Because innovation, POCs, and new technologies are often “bottom-up”
exercises, it can create confusion that delivering new tech is digital
transformation. Leaders must develop and communicate their vision, and
leaders sponsoring initiatives should be contributing to the digital
transformation roadmap.

What Are We Still Discussing Digital Transformation?

The sad answer is that many organizations aren’t delivering business value,
impact, and outcomes from their investments. Their digital practices exist
as shallow processes, and their technology investments likely creating a new
generation of technical debt.

That’s because digital transformations are challenging. They are really hard
to plan, execute, and deliver business impact.

But they are delivering financial returns.