Don’t call it a Digital Transformation

So all of us tech nerds have been working non-stop on digital projects for 20 years, some of us even longer. Over this time, many tomes have been written and discussed about what makes projects successful. In our quest to understand the patterns of success, many of the smartest among us have produced theories and concepts that have output golden words of wisdom – such as disruption, lean, agile, fail fast, and transformation – words that we use to help frame our efforts. For those who hold an ear to these narratives, the multitude of success stories is inescapable.

So why then are so many organisations and enterprises still resisting the urge to jump and get after that elusive digital transformation? Why are some companies grinding that car into gear and getting moving while too many of our best and brightest organisations are idling, waiting on the on-ramp of the information super highway? Is it that this transformation just seems too costly, and the projects always just seem to get so damn large? At its core, is this concept of digital transformation part of the problem? In my wisdom, I’ll look to propose three ways to realise success in practical and measurable ways.

TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

Every digital project has technical challenges. When we focus on technical challenges we end up with technical solutions. Much better solutions come from focusing on customers and customer challenges. 

An old fishing friend of mine says, the number one rule to fishing - go fish where the fish are. Obvious yes? Well, it works. My number one rule to digital, go digital where the digitals are. Also works!
Seems obvious, but when was the last time you or anyone in the business rang up 20 customers had a wee chat, collected some insights, bagged some data, and boiled down their feedback into three simple things:

1. What’s the #1 challenge the customer is trying to solve

2. What’s their #1 pain point when trying to solve it

3. What’s the biggest opportunity they see to improve their experience?

This has never changed and it’s not going to change. It works for companies with thousands of staff trying to build products internally and it works for consumer-focused companies just the same. Do it soon and do it often. Don’t settle for being told that someone’s already done it or that an external person or group is able to represent the customer for you.

Check the work, too often we find a bunch of dry personas with no personality, a bunch of guesses, devoid of any real stories or real discussions from any real customers. Don’t settle, get amongst it and feed the real stories and insights you gain into your project with much gusto and excitement. It’s fun and brings a well-needed dose of reality into your project!

Breadboards and circuits have been around 1922.

USE A BREADBOARD

A digital transformation is seldom one big wholesome solution. It’s typically a collection of many multiple systems interconnected and talking to each other. This concept hasn’t changed since the 1920s when electrical engineers started using breadboards to design complex electrical circuits. 

To enable connectivity, we need the modern equivalent of a breadboard. Something sitting in the middle of all the systems that brokers and manages the connections between them all in deliberate and predictable ways.

Fortunately modern middleware API platforms like Salesforce, MuleSoft, and Google Cloud  allow us to create data structures and objects super quickly in the cloud and output API’s automatically. These modern breadboards mean:

1. The amount of code we have to write is vastly reduced

2. We connect it once and it’s exposed for ever to as many apps as we want

3. Every app we make exposes more data and makes the next apps faster and faster to deliver

4. We can set up the foundations and deliver apps and services in weeks or months rather than years.

In short don’t be tempted to try to replace all of your old systems or infrastructure before you can start. Leave it as it is, connect it to some middleware and start predictably exposing your systems one database, app or service at a time.

START SMALL, OR BREAK IT IN HALF AND START SMALLER

Sizing things down to get started, isn’t a new idea. However, the promise of digital can be so alluring that often the natural tendency for digital projects is to pick up every detritus of a problem lying around the business, and fold it into an ever increasing rolling snowball of death.

Too many projects never start because they get too damn big. It’s easier said than done but if your project refuses to move, cut it in half. If it still won’t move, cut it in half again… keep going until it starts to shift.

 Why is this important?

1. Projects can fail - large projects fail big and fail slowly. Small projects fail smaller and faster

2. Small projects can still teach us big things, and we are learning more often and sooner

3. Projects require budgets. Budgets are easier to obtain if you have a history of delivering. Especially in the beginning cut things into small pieces, be prolific, deliver, earn trust…

Having been lucky enough to earn the trust of people like Amanda Lawrey, Chris Strydom and the wonderful teams at Fulton Hogan, I don’t think we ever once defined any of the many projects over the last 7 years as a transformation. They were just important projects. Problems to solve, people and teams to help and solutions to get after. Especially in the beginning, we cut the projects in half, we kept things small and we got started learning. We talked to the users, we helped them to design apps they knew they needed. Chris refused to be distracted with complex legacy systems, instead he just left it there and implemented an API infrastructure that gave us freedom to connect apps and services while not disturbing the old platform. 7 years later, millions saved, a heap of admin avoided and out in front of their competition.

 Looking back, perhaps now we can call it a transformation.