Where to Start with Digital Transformation?

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:

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

What is a Value Stream?

It may not be obvious, by the concept of a value stream is one of the most important concepts in a digital transformation.  Why?   Because once you understand a value stream, you start to truly understand your business and you’re on a clear path to improving customer experience.  Exceptional customer experience is your key business differentiator in the world of digital disruption and needs to be the core focus of any digital transformation.

Let’s define a value stream.  I’ll use what I consider, to be the best sources of knowledge reference. 

First from Scaled Agile.  

If you click on the image it will take you to the Leading SAFe 2 Day course I run at ALC Training.

Second from the TOGAF certification, written by the Open Group:

And here is a picture of a sample value stream map for an online purchase:

And here is another, outlining an emergency hospital admission:

As you can see it’s a simple overview, usually shown in 5-9 stages, of how a product or service starts life and is delivered to the consumer. 

As you can see, the business processes beneath can vary in complexity.  With an online purchase, the process is relatively simple.  With say intensive care, the process can be extremely complex and there are probably 1000’s or paths, depending on the type of care required.

It can also be known as:

Clearly, there are many values streams and they are quite different between industries.

Once we understand our value stream, we can then consider decomposing each component into systems and people.  An example of this is from Scaled Agile, where they define two types of value streams:

You’ll notice that the operational value stream is the one that is focused on the customer.  Whereas the development value stream is aligned to delivering systems in an agile manner.  In fact, these are development value streams are also known as a CI/CD pipeline:

So what we’ve now done, is to understand our business in the context of delivering value through software.  We cover this in our DevOps Foundation course:

Any questions on Scaled Agile or DevOps concepts, as always please reach out via twitter – @MusicComposer1 or find me on LinkedIn:

Governments Could Fall If Digital Transformation is not Successful

There are a number of examples in history, of how governments have fallen.  Either through the ballot box, through a coup d’etat or via a civil or military war.  But have you ever stopped to think that a lack of progress in a digital transformation, could be a fourth reason?

Let me back up a bit…and outline what I believe are the reasons we have a government.  Why does it exist and why we need one.  There are five:

Here is a great video that provides some more information on what government is?

Failure by governments to maintain those outcomes and deliver great customer experiences will result in disruption.  We’ve already seen this movie before right:

But hey, they’re all commercial examples.  Have you got anything that is relevant to government?  Sure:

Here is a great video explaining Brexit:

You can also extend that to local government, such as Queensland in Australia:

I talk about digital disruption and governments in the latest #AskTheCEO discussion here:

The same forces that have helped Uber, Netflix, Google and especially Apple become commercial disrupting forces, are the same for the government:

So what is the solution.  Well it’s important to understand what needs to transform in government and then do so, quickly.  Using the latest Lean-Agile and DevOps principles, along with great talent, is how Spotify undermined their competition, so government needs to do the same.  Here are three examples:

Interesting in learning more about digital transformation.  Check out a range of courses that I run at ALC Training:

DevOps Foundation

Cloud Security

Cloud Computing

Scaled Agile

Enterprise Big Data

 

What is Microsoft Azure and why should I use it?

Microsoft is one of the world leaders when it comes to cloud computing services.  In the last comparison of revenue streams from the cloud giants, back in Feb 2018, it seems that Microsoft was just ahead in front of AWS.

Want to learn more about Azure?  Well, there are options.  There is a great free resource from Microsoft that covers Azure fundamentals here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/

Or, if you’re looking for more a hands-on 1 Day Azure Technical Quickstart to understand how to provision resources, you can check out our 1 Day course here:

https://alctraining.com.au/course/microsoft-azure-technical-quickstart/

You can also reach out to us, for customised Azure and Office 365 courses.

Azure is classed as an Infrastructure-As-A-Service (Iaas) and Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) in the cloud computing world.  IaaS services are designed for system engineers, where you can set up and build servers, networks, and storage, and then install your apps on top.  If you’re in the software development business, then the PaaS services are designed for writing, testing and managing code, and target developers.  

Some important PaaS services that developers will need include:

Below is a brief snapshot of just the Compute services:

By combining together these services, you can create a rich tapestry of solutions.  It’s very similar to the age of analog electronics, where you could select oscillators, diodes and specific electronics components, to create solutions like creating a home radio.  

In Azure you can create very complex business solutions.  Below is an example of how you might integrate a complex corporate environment with Azure services, in a model known as hybrid cloud:

There are some very important services that are available in Azure, that align nicely to medium to large clients that have to comply with complex regulation.  Clients involving in banking, government, healthcare, and defence, need to maintain a level of corporate and regulatory governance, as well as a high level of cyber security protection in their cloud services.  Tools such as:

The diagram below shows an example of the types of recommendations that the Azure Advisor can provide:

Feel free to reach out anytime with your Azure of Office 365 questions or queries?

 

Why Governments will be Disrupted?

Digital transformation is the process of cultural,  technological and thought leadership innovation, that is required to ensure businesses remain competitive, relevant and able to survive.  Let’s break that down and explain what I mean.

Click on the image below to see ALC’s range of courses that can help with your digital transformation journey:

Cultural Innovation

This means allowing people within a business to develop and grow, by learning in a safe environment.  We often call this Failing Fast.  This helps to foster a culture within an organisation, that moves away from:

And move towards:

You can only innovate when you allow people to take risks.  But in concert, you need to provide tools and an environment for continual fast feedback.  This includes:

All these concepts and learnings appear again and again in many of the cultural change courses I run:

Click on the picture below to watch an awesome video from our DevOps Foundation course, covering Spotify Engineering Culture:

Technological Innovation

This means adopting the latest technological innovations, to help business leaders learn and act quickly.  There are many examples:

It’s no surprise that at ALC, we’re focusing on these key technological innovations:

Click on the diagram, below to see an awesome video from the Enterprise Big Data Professional course on why we use Hadoop over SQL when dealing with Big Data:

Thought Leadership

This is the most critical.  Leaders are the people in a company that pave the way for new things.  Just like in music, they are the avant-garde, breaking new ground, failing fast and leading by example.  They are skillful coaches that bring all their people with them on the journey.  They lead through:

You’ll find these leadership traits are exemplified in the following courses for leaders:

The diagram below shows you the Scaled Agile Framework, of SAFe for short.  Click on it and you’ll be taken to the FREE clickable version on their website:

Government

If you have ever worked in a government department or a local council, there are very few examples of these digital successes.  Why?  I believe many leaders of governments, whether they be the lord mayor of a council or the elected minister, fundamentally do not understand digital disruption.  They believe it is a phenomenon that only affects commercial entities and is not relevant to them. And the ones that do try and embrace digital disruption, don’t focus on cultural change, with leaders not leading by example.

Unfortunately, it is extremely relevant.  I believe governments will be disrupted, just like every organisation in the world will be disrupted.  Charities, councils, regulatory bodies, none of them are immune.  In fact, they are the entities that are most at risk of being irrelevant.  Why?

Because for every government service, there is are much better ways of delivering, by adopting the key tenants above and embracing digital transformation.  This means, if enough people do not see the value in government services, they will protest, they will resist taxes and want to live in a place where the services are incredible. 

We’ve seen trailers of this movie before:

Click on the diagram to show you how you digitally transform your government organisation using SAFe:

Check out my latest conversation on “Navingating Digital Disruption” on the New York hit show, #AskTheCEO with Avrohom Gottheil:

Revolutionise your Career…..Learn Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is the latest skill, that is moving into employment market today.  It supersedes a time where businesses relied  on IT professionals, typically between 1985-2008.  This is referred to as the client-server model era.

These IT professionals were employed to ensure that services were designed, deployed and run in a highly efficient and highly reliable manner.  Apps and data were run on servers, in a data centre at best…at worst it was hosted inside a cupboard.  Services could include:

Today, Cloud Computing has changed this landscape forever. It started to really mature and become used by businesses around 2008, Microsoft Hotmail and AWS being pionerring spirits, through to the present day. 

Below is a solution architecture, showing the services that are available instantly through AWS:

 Already we’re 10 years in,  and only within the last 3 years has cloud become common:

No longer is a $100,000 loan necessary, to buy infrastructure when starting a business.  You just need a credit card to buy the cloud services as you need them.  This means anyone can start a business and scale services with just 1 employee.  This accounts for the explosion in entrepreneurs, particularly females, who often have to balance income with kids.

Understanding Cloud Computing is not just for IT professionals, it’s for anyone who uses Cloud and wants to learn more.  

I’ve created a simple and engaging cloud computing mini-course, courtesy of ALC Training, for everyone to use, for FREE.

It’s highly interactive and includes a set of questions to test your knowledge.  Go on…have a go….and have some fun:

https://www.alc-group.com/introduction-to-cloud-computing/?utm_source=PaulColmer&utm_medium=Shared%20Post&utm_campaign=PC_ALCAd_Jan19

I would love to hear your feedback.  Please reach out on the channels below:

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