Digital Transformation is the ability of an organisation to remain competitive. By using new technologies more effectively than their competitors, this leads to greater market share, lower price points, improved product and/or service quality and constant innovation for clients. But where do you start?

This article is designed for medium to large organisations that want to know how to do this. I’ll draw on my 20 years of experience as an enterprise and solution architect with DXC technology. I was fortunate enough to help a range of clients which I can now couple with my knowledge as a trainer, across the 12+ courses that I now run.

Click to open the infographic below to see a snapshot of the steps to take to perform a digital transformation successfully.

Here is my list of key steps in order:

Use an Agile framework to help structure the entire transformation. My recommendation is to use the Scaled Agile Framework or SAFe, coupled with The Open Group Architecture framework or TOGAF. This will involve sending all the senior leaders on a Leading SAFe 2-day course, your architects, engineering and development functions on TOGAF Part 1 and Part 2 4 day course.
Understand what business objectives you’d like to achieve in the next 3-5 years.
Work with all the key stakeholders to develop a common mission and vision.
Send your security experts to become certified on the Certified Cloud Security Professional certification.
Identify key execution leaders, usually the program manager, a senior project manager and the lead architect, to go onto the 4-day Implementing SAFe course to become SAFe program consultants. I wouldn’t recommend relying on outside consultants unless you want to hire someone.
Run a value stream workshop with the key stakeholders to determine the best value stream to take forward that will deliver your first epic and the associated top 5-10 features.
Start running internal Leading SAFe workshops to ensure everyone know how SAFe works and outline the value stream that we’re going to take forward. Use the workshop to seek feedback and help improve the decision-making process.
Think about training for your technical resources. So unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably looking at Office 365 Security & Compliance (2 Days) and either AWS Quickstart (1 Day) or Azure Fundamentals (1 Day). My personal pick is to stay with Azure. It’s the most popular with my students in Australia. You could also consider Google and Oracle. I’ve had a handful of people use Google and only 2 use Oracle. I think they were from Oracle.
Identify the first Agile Release Train, be clear on what success looks like and ask your people to self-organise across the train, using the SAFe principles. Blend in the principles from the enterprise / solution architecture function and seek feedback from the teams.
Perform a training needs analysis workshop, by involving all those people that are required to build and deliver the solution. This is where you’ll need to identify the technical and soft skills that will be missing. This will include specific vendor product training, probably through eLearning methods and vendor training.
For soft skills, start thinking about cultural change programs for everyone on the trains. I’d recommend DevOps Foundation for everyone, DevSecOps Engineering for security and lead developers and DevOps Leader for the key leaders managing the train.
Don’t forget to bring the business on the journey too, so I can recommend the Cloud Computing Foundation (2 Days), designed for non-technical professionals and leads to an accredited APMG certification.
Almost certainly your transformation will contain a significant data component, so I can recommend training for all your technical resources on the newly released Enterprise Big Data Professional certification.
At this stage, you’ll be very close to deploying your first Agile Release Train, so you’ll need to ensure the relevant people have attended the SAFe Product Manager, Scrum Master and SAFe for Teams courses.
Finally, launch your train through a face-to-face Program Increment (PI) Planning workshop and allow your SAFe Program Consultants and Scrum Masters to coach the teams to success. Don’t forget to measure at every step to show progress. This is all explained in the SAFe implementation roadmap. If followed correctly, you’ll be delivering multiple features in the first 50 days.
Over time you’ll launch more trains, that are aligned to value streams to deliver more epics and features. As you grow, the trains will become much faster and with a team of 125 people or more, you’ll delivering features much faster than ever before.
Importantly, constantly track where you are in your business objectives, your mission and vision, to ensure you keep the trains on the tracks. There is where the Lean Portfolio Management components in SAFe that helps with the governance piece of this.

Do you have questions with these steps? Contact our awesome ALC Training team!

I’ve been drawn to becoming more skilful with social media platforms over the past 2 years. Mainly because I enjoy my social interactions online, but also because it gives me a unique window into the world we live in.

So what do I mean when I say ‘unique window’? Well, we are living in an age that has been coined as ‘disruptive’. A world where harnessing digital technologies is now giving smaller companies the leverage they need to compete with much larger competitors. This phenomenon is best known as Digital Disruption. Smaller companies that displace larger and older companies is nothing new. But what is new, is that our technology is very adaptable, very agile, changes frequently but more importantly provides scale over people.

The most potent example of this is social media, which continues to be a key influencer on customer decision making and brand awareness.

In the old days, if I were to start a small business, let’s say it is a martial arts school, I’d place a series of small adverts in the local paper. This would generate some initial interest and possibly generate 5 new members. I would augment this with a targeted flyer drop, let all my friends in the area know about the club and invite them to spread the word. If I’m lucky, after a few months of hard work I may have a class of 10 people. I then need to find a way of regularly signing up new members to scale my business.

This used to be achieved mainly through local paper placements and by ensuring I listed my business under ‘Martial Arts’ in the Yellow Pages. I found these to be most effective in helping growing numbers, coupled with word of mouth. The picture below, shows the Yellow Pages in action, prior to going online:

Today, things have changed dramatically. Yellow Pages as a big, thick directory, has been replaced with Google, which in turn needs to link to a website and content showing my martial arts prowess. I would also use Facebook to target my local people, as a replacement for the local newspaper and also ensure my profile is updated in LinkedIn. Twitter is a great platform for spreading my name across a global landscape, where I would also target locals. And then finally, I would need to target my established client base, through a series of newsletters sent via email, outlining the various activities they can do in the club. Things like competition days, gradings and special events or seminars.

But where is the next phase of social media marketing going….well I believe that social media platforms are already disrupting our traditional broadcasting channels. First it was print, illustrated by the Yellow Pages directory and the local newspapers, now it’s television, illustrated by the rise of Netflix and Amazon Prime. Tomorrow, social media platforms are becoming channelised and highly interactive, offering a replacement for traditional television stations. We see this with YouTube channels, Twitter Lists / Periscope Video broadcasts and of course Facebook Live. Just look at the growth of Amazon Prime in the US over the past few years:

“The 2017 Academy Aware ratings were the lowest in nine years at 32.9 million viewers, down 4.4 percent from last year. Even the Super Bowl didn’t break any records despite the fact that it had all of the makings of a ratings blockbuster.”

Source: https://www.adweek.com/digital/kurt-abrahamson-sharethis-guest-post-social-media-is-the-new-television/

The business counter-action to this growing threat or disruption has been very slow…in fact it appears to have gone unnoticed by all the major television stations. Government channels such as SBS and ABC are ahead, in that they don’t have adverts placements, they continually invest in securing great content, particularly in the areas of current affairs, technology, news and documentaries. Freeview is one of the the most visual examples of how the Australian market has reacted to this disruption:

https://www.freeview.com.au/freeviewfv/

Whereas the commercial channels such as ten, seven and nine seem to be putting on more adverts, which last longer and help turn off their customers, who in turn switch to channels, such as Netflix with zero adverts for a small fee. I know…because I am one of them. Here is a great diagram that illustrates the comparative reach costs between traditional and social media channels. Remember this is reach, not actual engagement or lead generation, that’s a different story:

So what is the moral of this story…..well I’m seeing all these trends because of my use and consumption of social media. The mainstream television stations say little about the latest disruptive technologies, such as distributed ledgers (#Blockchain), Artificial Intelligence (#AI) and social media advertising. Instead I’m seeing this awareness and coverage expand across many social media players. Mainly because I can choose how I interact with the services, but also because I can filter the services in any way I wish.

It will be interesting see the first casualty in this disruptive war…any bets on which channel may go out of business first?

Australia’s TV ‘Channel 10’ share price over the past 5 years….

Where to Start with Digital Transformation?

Modern Social Media Platforms are the next generation of Television?