From inflation to the war in Ukraine and the ongoing effects of COVID-19, a perfect storm of economic, social, and geopolitical disruptions has increased uncertainty for business leaders. Building on research and insights from technology executives across industries, Metis Strategy has identified five actions leaders can take to navigate that uncertainty in the months ahead:
Recent downgrades to economic forecasts suggest an economic decline is on the way (indeed, some argue that it has already begun). In July, the International Monetary Fund released an updated global economic outlook which forecasted growth to slow to 3.2% in 2022, down an additional 0.4% from its April forecast and sitting at just above half of the 6.1% growth from 2021. The IMF cited the war in Ukraine, supply chain disruptions, and tighter monetary policy among the key drivers behind the decline. In the U.S., inflation continues to rise, recently surpassing 9% to reach a 40-year high. Additionally, interest rate hikes to tame inflation are already underway by the U.S. Federal Reserve. With so many economic factors at play, uncertainty will be the only constant for the time being. As such, contingency planning and risk management in decision making will be vital to long-term success.
Multi-scenario planning allows decision makers to identify potential outcomes and the likely predictors of each to ensure that the organization is ready to act quickly no matter what comes to pass. Companies must not place too much emphasis on small data variations, as this course of action will not necessarily yield the best results given the array of factors at play. Rather than try to predict or plan for each incremental interest rate hike, for example, leaders instead should prepare for a combination of possible economic conditions: inflation and a recession, inflation and economic growth, stagflation, and so on.
By pursuing macro-level planning for multiple scenarios, organizations will better be able to see the shifting landscape and make timely adjustments rather than wavering due to “paralysis by analysis.”
New work models demand new infrastructure. That sentiment has never been as profound as it was over the past two and a half years as CIOs facilitated a massive shift to remote work. Today, those CIOs face a mandate to enable productive work in a hybrid environment.
As hybrid work models become the norm, it is time for CIOs to focus once again on their organization’s long-term agenda. Corporations know that the pace of change in technology has never been as quick as it is today, and at the same time will never be this slow again. With over 70% of organizations pursuing a flexible or hybrid work model, companies must invest in infrastructure, training, and culture to provide teams with the tools they need and ensure a strong and collaborative environment across more flexible work models.
That requires giving people the tools and skills they need to navigate the uncertainty that lies ahead. Upskilling and reskilling programs are some of the most prominent ways to do this. A LinkedIn study found that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company that invests in their learning. This has manifested itself in many ways at insurance giant MetLife, which launched a digital academy for employees to develop technically. The company has also worked to foster a culture in which employees feel empowered to achieve their career aspirations, Bill Pappas, MetLife’s Head of Technology and Operations, said in a recent episode of the Technovation podcast. Part of developing a strong hybrid model includes investing in the necessary tools, from collaboration platforms to cloud infrastructure, that enable teams to work productively from wherever they are.
Every organization must define its own version of a sustainable work model, including how to attract and retain employees, and how to nurture the desired culture. As old work operating models are redefined and new ones are implemented, investments in people and infrastructure that enable digital dexterity, paired with an increased focus on cultivating culture, will be key differentiators for organizations’ long-term success.
Supply chain challenges brought on by COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, among other factors, have exposed the fragility of global trade networks, which have seen relatively little disruption over the past 30 years. The global economy’s reliance on Ukraine and Russia for crucial commodities such as oil, wheat, and neon (used in chip manufacturing) has hurt national economies and small businesses alike. The war also has disrupted both air cargo routes and sea shipments, driving up wait times and prices. Trade restrictions (such as sanctions and tariffs) and weakening trust between countries further compound those challenges. Increasingly, companies are questioning whether global supply chains will be as beneficial as it has been in the past.
Consequently, executives are re-assessing the viability of relationships with suppliers both foreign and domestic. Decision-makers may benefit from diversifying their supplier portfolios, possibly favoring those that are more geographically proximate and located in more politically stable countries to further help prepare and protect against future disruptions. Companies such as Intel and General Motors, for example, are building new manufacturing capabilities within the U.S. to decrease their dependency on suppliers in Asia. However, the decision to regionalize varies widely across organizations and industries, and many economists, academics, and executives are speculating about what the next decade holds. Professor Willy C. Shih of Harvard Business School argues that regional supply chain blocs may be the future of international trade as organizations emphasize safer and more stable routes. Others contend the benefits of a global supply chain (i.e. reduced costs), will regain value and that a “transformational shift from global to regional business” is unlikely. The common factor across both theories (and many others) is that significant instability is likely to endure. That makes building supply chains with sufficient flexibility of paramount importance. Technology offers several avenues to achieve this.
Many organizations are turning to digital tools to boost supply chain resilience and transparency. Companies can leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to carry out risk analysis of supply chain patterns in real-time. Autonomous planning, for example, allows organizations to increase supply chain efficiency and decrease necessary human involvement. Enterprise resource planning upgrades and advanced track-and-trace solutions also offer more visibility into the movement of goods and can help mitigate risk. Furthermore, emerging technologies such as blockchain, autonomous mobile robots, and 3D printing may offer additional benefits from the warehouse floor to a product’s final destination.
Cybersecurity remains a priority for all members of the executive suite. Last year saw a record number of data compromises, up 68% from 2020 with an average cost of a staggering $4.24 million per breach. Roughly 65% of respondents in Foundry’s 2022 State of The CIO study said current socioeconomic pressures have further boosted the importance of increasing cybersecurity, and cyber has been noted as the CEO’s top priority for IT in 2022.
The increasing volume of digital interactions has led to a dramatic rise in the likelihood of breaches and the cost of protection. Facing a threat landscape that is evolving faster than ever, organizations should act quickly to re-evaluate company polices, assess risk management strategy, and bolster both internal and external security practices. This requires a mindset shift in how security is viewed. Traditionally viewed purely as a cost center, organizations must view cybersecurity as a critical piece of the enterprise risk mitigation strategy. Today, businesses must continuously update their cybersecurity practices to reduce the risk of becoming a target and ensure they can respond quickly if or when they face an attack.
Technology leaders should communicate clearly to C-level peers and boards about how risk is being managed. At the same time, it’s important to continue developing strong cybersecurity hygiene at all levels of the organization and to disincentivize unsafe behaviors. Security policies should be evaluated and updated regularly to ensure that they are keeping up with changing times. Regardless of what specific technologies an organization pursues, it must accompany the mindset shift to cybersecurity ultimately as a risk mitigator and cost saver, rather than just a cost center.
Environment, social, and governance initiatives (ESG) have been on the rise for the past several years. Individuals are becoming increasingly concerned not only with working for a company that is actively pursuing ESG initiatives, but also in purchasing from one. This trend shows no signs of slowing down.
It is critical that organizations clearly communicate actions and results of ESG efforts to the public. Historically, however, ESG goals have not always had clear or easily obtainable data and metrics. Technology is making that job easier. Connected devices, for example, can conduct remote diagnostics of buildings, enabling “smart buildings” and helping to minimize their carbon footprint. CIOs can lead the charge on ESG initiatives by identifying key results that IT can deliver, weaving ESG into an organization’s broader digital strategy, and rallying support across the organization to ensure progress on ESG initiatives is fully realized.
The global business environment is in a period of transition. Leaders must use this time to ensure their organizations can respond in a nimble fashion to unexpected changes and not only survive, but thrive, no matter what the future holds. This requires a holistic look across people, process, technology, ecosystems, and strategy and, in many cases, willingness across the enterprise to transform operating models and ditch traditional ways of working. Technology leaders can be at the forefront of this shift, pairing their expertise in digital with a focus on operational excellence to drive sustainable change across the enterprise.
Carol Juel has been the chief information officer at Synchrony Financial since the company’s creation, after it spun out from General Electric just over seven and a half years ago. She had worked at GE for the decade prior to that. In the early stages of Synchrony Financial’s existence, Juel had the opportunity to think about new beginnings as to how a modern technology organization should function to best support a new, already scaled and growing business.
Like many CIOs, Juel introduced agile methods as a primary process to develop new initiatives within the technology realm. Like many peers of hers across industries, the iterative approach, engaging the intended audience and users in the process from ideation through to completion ensured a better end product, and it reduced the risk that time and money would be invested only to conclude with a collective yawn from customers, for example. Every project has degrees of uncertainty and risk associated with them, especially if they are truly innovative. If you are batting 1.000, you are not innovating, after all. Therefore, when contemplating scenarios where uncertainty reins, greater degrees of cross-functional collaboration are essential, and they can get the collective batting average higher for the technology and digital teams as a result.
Come March of 2020, we all entered perhaps the greatest period of uncertainty as the consequences of the pandemic on our personal and professional lives began to be reconciled. The progress Synchrony Financial IT had made in instituting agile gave Juel an idea. Why not make the executive team (the chief executive officer and his reports) an agile team of sorts? One of the key aspects that Juel thought would facilitate setting a path during unprecedented times was the concept of the daily stand-up meeting. “Agile stand-up meetings, for those who have never been to one, are a very specific meeting,” said Juel.
“Once or twice a day, the team gets together to communicate information. You’re talking about what you need, you’re making decisions and you’re talking about blockers. [By the conclusion of each meeting], everyone is clear about the actions that need to be taken, who is accountable and what’s going to get done by the next agile standup meeting.”
This was the new way of working for the Synchrony executive team, but those executives already had seen the great strides the technology team had made in leveraging the same methods, and this made the case very easy for Juel to implement this among her peers and with her boss, the CEO. “It was a conversation on an afternoon, and by the next morning we had our first executive-level stand up meeting.” Juel served as the scrum master for the team, helping the team streamline the methods used to achieve their goals.
The advantages were legion. Issues were discussed as soon as they were identified, common approaches to rectify those issues were developed almost immediately and with broad buy-in from across the team, the consequences of those decisions were monitored real-time and any course correction could be made quickly. The speed of decision making hastened and the pathway to value shortened just as fast.
“There was so much uncertainty at the outset of the pandemic. What consumer spending was going to look like? How would the job market evolve? Having tools as a leadership team that allowed us to work differently to respond to this unprecedented set of challenges was exciting.” This fostered a broader agile cultural change across the company. As the executives learned more about these methods, they began to deploy them with their own teams. Thus, the speed of all teams began to hasten in ways akin to the change that the technology team had experienced in the early stages of its agile journey. Juel credits these changes as critical factors in allowing Synchrony Financial to launch both Verizon’s and Venmo’s first ever credit card programs. Both happened in record times remotely.
The agile approach led to creative thoughts on how best to enhance the experiences of employees during trying times. As it became clear that normalcy would not return by the time schools let out for the summer, it also became clear how disruptive it would be for many to have kids at home all day without typical summer outlets like camps. This is where the immersion of the executive team in the agile principles shined. The leaders of Technology, Marketing and Human Resources worked together to design the camp. “The goal was to help school age children to have engaging activities that would be inspiring,” Juel said. “Older kids could help design programs for younger kids. Employees served as mentors for all, and different employees took responsibility for developing different modules.” These would include everything from learning how to do a cartwheel to STEM classes.
Not only did this fill a need that was a source of anxiety for employees, but it strengthened the community across Synchrony Financial, as employees helped other employees’ children.
A little more than a year into the pandemic, in April 2021, Brian Doubles was named chief executive officer of the company. As with any leadership change of this magnitude, it provided a reason to rethink Synchrony Financial’s operating model. One of those would bring technology and operations together under Juel’s leadership, as she took on the role of chief technology and operating officer. As technology became more pervasive across the operations, the tie between the two became clearer, and in a period of dramatic change the value to be derived by linking these functions in a new way was profound.
As her influence inside of Synchrony Financial grew, so too did her reputation outside of the company, as well. She would be asked to join the board of Brighthouse Financial in the fourth quarter of 2021, joining a select but growing group of enterprise technology leaders who have been asked to join boards.
By thinking more expansively about her role as a technologist, Juel fostered resilience in the business operations (eventually taking over responsibility for business operations), resilience in the families of employees, and became a board-level tech executive in the process. This is a great example of the great work done in IT finding broader applications and increased value through the creative thought process of a strong leader.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written two bestselling books, and his third, Getting to Nimble, was recently released. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
Most companies of consequence have a chief information officer. Many others have chief technology officers, who might be the heads of product and engineering for a tech-centric company, or, for some non-tech sector companies, might be the heads of infrastructure or tech-savvy leaders reporting to less technical chief information officers. A growing number of companies have chief digital officers, as well, often signaling the need to have an executive oversee digital transformation efforts exclusively. There are examples where the top tech and digital chief has one or a combination of these titles. The combination of all three roles for three separate executives occurs less frequently, needless to say, but less frequent still are examples of companies with execs with these three titles each of whom report to the chief executive officer. One such company is Johnson Controls.
Johnson Controls is a 136-year-old, Milwaukee-based company that develops products and services that enhance the intelligence of buildings to the tune of nearly $30 billion in annual revenue. Mike Ellis is the company’s chief customer and digital officer, adding customer responsibilities to the CDO title. He joined Johnson Controls in October 2019. Diane Schwarz is the company’s chief information officer, who joined the company in August of 2020. Finally, Vijay Sankaran is the company’s chief technology officer, and he joined the company in May 2021.
Ellis describes his role as chief customer and digital officer as deciphering the impact of the company’s efforts on customers, engaging them to understand what is most important to them. The goal is to innovate in collaboration with them, identifying ideas that will make a difference in their operations. Additionally, Ellis is responsible for digital product innovation and enterprise marketing, as the CMO reports through to him.
Schwarz has been a CIO multiple times over at companies like Hunt Consolidated and Textron. She has what she refers to as the traditional CIO purview of infrastructure, applications, and websites. Beyond that, she owns the customer experience, including “how our employee operates with all of our applications, how they get the day-to-day job done,” she noted. Schwarz added, “Mike owns the customer’s experience with our products, but then when you have the overlap of the Venn diagram, as the customers interact with portals, billing and how to schedule a ticket for field service; that’s where it goes back into the CIO responsibilities. It’s not, black and white to say that everything the customer interacts with Johnson Controls is under Mike’s umbrella. We have to navigate what really is the product experience versus the application experience.”
Sankaran has also been a CIO previously at TD Ameritrade, where he also ran an innovation program for the company. He oversees products for Johnson Controls. “When we think about product, it’s really the game-changing part of what’s going on in our industry right now – the software part of that product,” he said. “[We work on building] the right thing and build the thing right. My focus is all around building the thing right and building out a world-class digital software engineering organization at Johnson Controls.” His team’s focus is on edge Internet of Things (IoT) through a software and data platform called Open Blue. It is a platform that allows Johnson Controls’ customers to drive energy efficiency and sustainability by managing their spaces, smart buildings and then applying artificial intelligence [AI] and machine learning [ML] to be able to generate those insights. This creates a closed-loop so that we fully get to the smart autonomous buildings.
“We’re building the software and all the connectors and the data structures and the AI models in my new organization to support that and work closely with Mike around the customer needs and experiences, and closely with Diane’s organization around the broader ecosystem of service and support and infrastructure and cybersecurity to make sure that the pieces that overlap in that Venn diagram come together seamlessly,” noted Sankaran.
The group that now reports to Sankaran to bring this to life used to partially report to Ellis, who recognized the value in unifying the edge software engineering capabilities together with the integrated Open Blue platform. This has proven to be a strategic differentiator for the company. Sankaran has accelerated Ellis’ vision by implementing the scaled agile framework across the group to accelerate speed to market.
Schwarz noted that a key to determining where one’s responsibilities begin and the next one’s ends boils down to solid communications both informal and formal. “We absolutely get that we need to work productively on figuring out the handoffs and providing clarity to our teams,” said Schwarz. “[We are] a company going through a huge transformational shift to become digital to the core. The kinds of problems that we’re solving are new to the organization.”
When asked about the formal structures in place to facilitate the forging of strong bonds across the company, Schwarz offered the example of cybersecurity. There is an enterprise cybersecurity group, which reports to her, and there is a product cybersecurity team that reports to Sankaran. Though there is some overlap between what they do, they are distinct disciplines. Schwarz and her enterprise chief information security officer (CISO) attend Sankaran’s product cybersecurity briefings, and likewise, Sankaran and his CISO attend Schwarz’s enterprise cybersecurity briefings. This is indicative of a broader desire to keep each other informed especially in the areas where roles overlap.
Ellis notes that the approach Johnson Controls has taken in defining these roles and responsibilities has facilitated the 136-year-old company moving from industrial speed to the speed of a software company. It speaks volumes as to the company’s commitment to a digital future that it has three leaders of such consequence reporting to the CEO of the company. To have that degree of digital sophistication represented at the executive level bodes well for the company to accomplish its goal of becoming digital to the core.
Agile has become the most prevalent software development methodology, with 95% of companies noting they use Agile in some form, according to the latest State of Agile report. As Agile enters its third decade, it is not a question of whether to use Agile, but which flavor of Agile to use.
In our work with companies of all sizes over the years, we have found that while many organizations purport to “do Agile,” they do not necessarily deliver the higher quality, appropriately prioritized software that Agile promises.
Cultural barriers and organizational misalignment often get in the way of realizing the true value of Agile. Indeed, respondents to the survey above cited resistance to change, lack of leadership participation, and organizational culture at odds with Agile values among the top challenges to adopting Agile practices.
In this article, we will provide a brief overview of the Agile methodology and discuss five characteristics that have helped leaders address common challenges and realize greater value from their Agile implementations.
Why Agile?
Agile methodology prioritizes delivering software in an incremental and iterative way. The way we define Agile today has its roots in 2001, when a group of software practitioners formulated the Agile Manifesto. Unlike prior approaches, in which software was developed in silos with little input from customers or business partners, Agile methodology prioritized an iterative development process that emphasized collaboration and adaptability.
Why do so many organizations choose Agile? Those familiar with linear “waterfall” software development lifecycles will remember how slow, counterintuitive, and frustrating it could be to complete a project. Project managers spent most of their time making plans and adjusting them daily, while engineers found themselves torn between actually developing software and re-estimating months of work based on changing requirements. Users were rarely happy with the end product, and despite lots of negotiation it rarely felt like anyone was “winning.”
While waterfall development has a role to play in some IT projects, much of the corporate world has embraced Agile to jump-start software development and delivery efforts. When implemented well, Agile can lead to high-quality software delivered frequently and built with the end-user in mind.
In our work with Agile teams across large companies, we have observed the following five characteristics of successful implementations:
1. Executive buy-in and commitment
Any organization that wants to start on an Agile path or improve its existing Agile practice must begin with a real commitment from executive leadership. For an Agile initiative to be successful, leaders need to possess the Agile mindset and be determined to lead and support their employees through the transition.
Most organizations that fail at their Agile initiatives miss this first step. We frequently see that leaders fall at two extreme ends of the spectrum: they are either micromanagers or they are absent. The best Agile leaders, on the other hand, give teams the autonomy to do their work while removing roadblocks and acting as a guide to ensure that goals are clear and the work contributes to the broader vision. Effective Agile leaders allow their employees to fail while creating mechanisms to learn from failures so that they are not repeated.
We see most successful implementations of Agile in organizations where leaders guide and inspire, establish the right framework, and empower their teams to do their best work. Leaders do this best by listening to their teams and trusting their judgement in the way they do their work.
2. Choosing the right process
As mentioned earlier, these days it is not a matter of whether to use Agile, but rather what flavor of Agile to use. Below are a few common approaches your teams might choose:
Scrum is the most commonly used Agile methodology for organizations that want to develop products incrementally in short iterations, with more than 75% of respondents to the Agile survey noting they use some version of it. Scrum is frequently used interchangeably with Agile, and most Agile teams today will use basic pillars of Scrum such as Sprint Planning and Daily Standups. Those whose projects involve high levels of uncertainty may select Scrum because it allows teams to share progress frequently and pivot as needed.
Many mature Agile teams favor Kanban, an Agile framework for continuous work with limited throughput, or scenarios in which teams may be working on only a handful of tasks at one time. A typical Kanban team will have work requests coming in regularly, and the team will release on a continuous basis. This approach tends to work well for teams with work that is more operational or “keep-the-lights on” in nature, such as minor feature updates or bug fixes.
Organizations that want to expand their Agile practices to large programs or portfolios often select a scaled Agile framework. SAFe®, as it is known, is the most prevalent framework for enterprise-level implementations of Agile. This is often the choice for large programs with multiple teams and intricate dependencies. These large programs are typically a combination of Scrum and Kanban teams.
The best way to select the right flavor for your organization is to first observe and listen. Experienced Agile Transformation leaders will assess existing teams, tools, and processes to understand the current state of existing Agile practices. They will then pair those findings with the strategic goals of the business to choose the most appropriate implementation.
3. Team structures that fit the company’s goals and culture
Once leadership commits to the process and an appropriate Agile methodology has been selected, it is time to begin the “practice” of Agile.
Regardless which methodology you choose, two things are critical to a successful implementation: team structures, and the roles and responsibilities within those teams.
The Agile methodology has clearly defined roles with very specific responsibilities. The Product Owner owns the vision of the ultimate goal and is responsible for setting priorities to bring value to the customers quickly. Scrum Masters are servant-leaders, responsible for removing impediments and ensuring that the team adheres to Agile principles. Delivery Teams, which can include team members with different areas of expertise depending on the project, are responsible for producing high-quality products.
Clear roles and responsibilities prevent confusion. Without them, things fall through the cracks and there may be friction between team members with overlapping roles or reporting relationships. For example, some organizations may choose to appoint someone’s direct manager as a Product Owner. As work commences, the direct report working on the team may find it difficult to know when they are hearing from their boss, who can mandate how and when certain work gets done (and makes compensation and promotion decisions), or from the Product Owner, who does not dictate how the work gets done. Having a boss as a Product Owner can also diminish the sense of ownership a person has about their project.
The second most common mistake we find occurs during the formation of teams. Whatever Agile methodology an organization chooses, there are common aspects of successful Agile teams:
Teams with these qualities often will be better prepared to produce their best work while also adapting to changes in technology or customer demands. When teams continuously deliver products that meet customers’ needs, trust will continue to develop between teams and management.
Two of the most common and easy-to-fix mistakes we see involve team size and skillset. Teams that are too large often lead to longer meetings and time to align. Teams lacking cross-functional skillsets are more dependent on other teams. In both cases, teams risk increased complexity and potential for errors.
4. A true commitment to continuous learning
Implementing Agile at scale requires a commitment to continuous learning. Rather than conducting a post-mortem analysis at the conclusion of a project and filing away the findings, Agile puts specific emphasis on Kaizen, which means continuous improvement. The concept, which comes from the Toyota Manufacturing System, aims to eliminate waste by looking for product and process quality improvements throughout the entire development cycle.
In Agile, work is broken down into smaller increments so that learning from each increment can be applied to the following increment. Agile teams will conduct Sprint Retrospectives at the end of each one-to-four-week increment where they discuss and document what went well and what could be done better going forward. They then take these learnings to make the next increment more effective.
The importance of continuous learning is often overlooked. Leaders should allow their teams to fail and learn from those failures, while providing appropriate guardrails to ensure the team is not taking on undue risk. It is critical that teams not only hold regular and honest retrospectives, but that they also act on those findings and track progress. Too often, these retrospectives can become a routine activity that does not add value. By checking in frequently to discuss lessons learned, teams can quickly determine whether a product is meeting customer needs or changes they can make to their internal processes to ensure smooth delivery.
5. The right metrics
When measuring Agile maturity, teams should consider both hard and soft metrics.
Hard metrics are often quantitative data that can be obtained from the tools that teams use. They include:
It is important to evaluate hard metrics over a defined period of time in order to measure continuous improvement. After collecting data for at least four to six weeks, leaders will begin to see whether a team is improving or remaining stagnant. Generally, teams that embrace Agile values deliver what they commit to and increase their velocity over time.
Soft metrics are more qualitative in nature and are usually obtained using surveys and observations. We find that high-functioning Agile teams often have:
An effective Scrum Master, for example, will regularly check in with the team to ask for their level of satisfaction with the project and process. High-functioning teams respect each other’s feedback, are open to discussing difficult issues, and support one another throughout the process. From the outside, a mature Agile team will look like a well-oiled machine. Teams will be producing high-quality, innovative work that is validated in increments, and they likely will have fun doing it!
As companies continue to deploy Agile practices across their organizations, it is important to remember that it is a journey of continuous improvement. Agile is a way of thinking, and it best serves organizations when it grows and evolves with the organization’s needs. By choosing the right flavor of Agile, building cross-functional teams with clear roles and responsibilities, and practicing strong leadership from the top, companies will be better positioned to ensure that they can deliver the value that Agile promises.
With all the ways digital innovation has enabled companies to remain productive during the pandemic, one of the most positive outcomes is improved collaboration across traditional business silos. In my new book, Getting to Nimble: How to Transform Your Company into a Digital Leader, I discuss how enterprises have made these silos more permeable, creating greater partnerships along the way.
Consider the following five examples and how they could apply to your digital transformation efforts.
Talented technologists are in high demand at most organizations, tasked with helping teams in other divisions figure out the digital implications of their ideas and strategize accordingly. In many cases, these ideas come from the technologists themselves. Companies that provide such “T-shaped” career paths offer an enormous advantage, developing leaders with great breadth and depth of experience. When they ascend to “chief” roles, they do so with a much clearer understanding about how value is created within the enterprise.
Agile methodology has been a boon for collaboration across the enterprise.
The traditional “waterfall” method of development involves someone from the business side (outside of IT) placing an order with the IT department. The IT team then develops this order, with little input from the business side until the project is completed months later.
In contrast, agile development includes the intended audience or user of the project in development from ideation through completion. With each iteration, the user validates value, and features are amplified or turned off accordingly. In some cases, the entire project may even be scrapped as a result of what the team learns.
DevOps blends two traditionally siloed parts of the technology and digital domain: development and operations. In a traditional project development model, developers take a project from ideation through completion, and the operations team then moves it forward. There is often a moment in the lifecycle when the project is “thrown over the wall” from development to operations (even this phrase highlights the distance and disconnects between the activities of the two groups).
DevOps instead makes delivery teams responsible for production issues and fixes, whether legacy or new, drawing them into the lifecycle earlier. Greater levels of involvement and accountability make for better work products.
The migration from a project to a product orientation is another area that benefits from greater collaboration. Internal “products” are also good examples of this – think order-to-cash, onboarding new hires, or creating a mobile customer experience.
These products potentially involve great value, and the product teams are typically cross-divisional or cross-discipline: They might include tech and digital, marketing, sales, operations, and any other division to which the product is relevant. A product leader should lead the cross-functional team, and that team should be prepared to remain intact for a longer period of time than the typical project.
An early example of this type of project orientation comes from Atticus Tysen, Chief Information and Security Officer at Intuit. When Tysen became CIO, he brought with him a product orientation, defining products for IT to drive. By developing in long-term teams, each team member was able to develop a higher level of expertise in the product area than they would have in a more traditional project structure.
Data strategy has also driven more cross-functional thinking. Done well, all strategy should invite greater collaboration across traditional silos since value is truly driven at the intersection of the disciplines. Data strategy should apply everywhere data is gathered, secured, synthesized, and analyzed – across the entire company.
Many companies have found it useful to have a leader who drives data strategy on the company’s behalf. To do this effectively, that leader (whether the CIO, the chief data officer, or another IT role) should engage leaders in other parts of the company to ensure that the data strategy is as comprehensive and useful as possible.
These are just a few areas where stronger collaboration is happening across industries and geographies. Companies that fail to take advantage of these trends risk falling behind more nimble players in their industry.
Peter A. High is the author of GETTING TO NIMBLE: How to Transform Your Company into a Digital Leader (Kogan Page, Spring 2021) and President of Metis Strategy, a management and strategy consulting firm focused on the intersection of business and technology. He has advised and interviewed many of the world’s top CIOs and leaders at multi-billion-dollar corporations like Gap, Bank of America, Adobe, Time Warner Inc., Intuit, and more.
While CIOs continue to prioritize the shift to product-oriented operating models in 2021, companies still struggle to create empowered product teams throughout their organizations. One significant inhibitor is often the lack of progress and investment in DevOps.
Amazon Web Services defines DevOps as “the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity.” In this setup, “development and operations teams are no longer siloed… [and] engineers work across the entire application lifecycle, from development and test to deployment and operations”.
DevOps can significantly enable product operating model transformations. It brings agile processes to life through technical enablement, turning processes into automation. Put simply, this often means automating the software development process from start (continuous integration / CI) to finish (continuous deployment or delivery / CD) while also creating empowered developers with a pulse on customer needs.
A successful DevOps transformation enables teams to react quickly to shifting market demands and reduces risk by decreasing the time it takes to get working software out the door. For example, an empowered product team that releases new features daily or hourly can iterate and innovate securely much faster than in the past, allowing for constant validation of product strategy and the ability to scale when they find something that works.
DevOps, Agile, and product operating model shifts are closely linked in successful digital companies. Through our work with some of the largest organizations in the world (both digital natives and digital immigrants), we have found that leaders who closely couple DevOps transformation efforts with Agile and product management transformations are significantly more successful in realizing their goals. Below are four tips to help you do so successfully:
In future posts, we will go into more detail about how to kickstart your DevOps transformation, from examining the key dimensions of the transformation process to exploring creative ways to fund DevOps efforts. Drop us a note if you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions for future topics to cover!
The Metis Strategy team was honored to participate in the 2019 Forbes CIO Next conference, where chief information officers, technology and operations leaders, VCs, and artificial intelligence experts shared their insights into the evolution of AI in the enterprise and gave us a glimpse of where things are headed in 2020. Here are a few lessons we brought home:
“Digital immigrant” companies leverage their strengths. Organizations not born in the cloud, often referred to as “digital immigrants,” continue to face challenges that many of their digital native competitors do not. But as legacy firms upgrade their technology environments and make progress on digital transformation efforts, they increasingly are able to make use of their inherent advantages: stockpiles of valuable data, decades of industry expertise, and the scale to enter new markets quickly.
At Rockwell Automation, for example, the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) and an increased focus on data has helped the company improve its on-time delivery, optimize and automate many internal processes, and shift its business model toward services such as telemetry and predictive maintenance. At insurance firm Travelers, aerial photos paired with geospatial data and claims information help the company quickly assess potential losses and deliver help to customers.
In 2020, we expect digital immigrant firms will continue to use their data and scale advantages to optimize internal processes and deliver tech-enabled products and services that can compete with their startup rivals. New technology investments will focus on business capabilities that truly differentiate companies from their competitors.
New ways of working take hold, but developing talent remains a challenge. The line between IT and the business has all but disappeared as firms embrace cross-functional, agile product teams. Many executives noted that this way of working has allowed them to respond more quickly to market changes and provide better customer experiences. We expect this cross-functional collaboration to increase in the year ahead.
At the same time, the battle for talent shows no signs of slowing down. Conference attendees listed talent as a top priority for 2020 as they look to recruit, hire, and retain new people while re-skilling existing employees for jobs of the future. Executives said they continue to seek and develop “T-shaped” employees who have a breadth and depth of skills that span technology and operations. They also recognize the need to create work environments that promote continuous learning at all levels.
We’re still in early innings with AI. Enterprise adoption of AI and machine learning is accelerating as companies explore new use cases and pursue applications that drive concrete business value. In the year ahead, we expect many companies will work to hone existing use cases and develop mechanisms to scale advanced analytics capabilities across the enterprise. Indeed, as many traditional organizations called themselves tech companies in recent years, some panelists suggested we might start hearing them refer to themselves as AI companies.
But significant work remains to be done. Companies continue to invest in their core data infrastructure, and executives are looking for new ways to measure and communicate ROI for their AI initiatives. There are also fundamental issues yet to be resolved, such as how to create explainable algorithms, how to reduce inherent bias in data sets, and whether certain AI technologies should operate without a human in the loop.
The pinnacle: using data to drive growth. Both winners of this year’s Forbes CIO Innovation Award used their companies’ rich data sets to develop new services and drive tangible financial growth:
As we enter 2020, we expect CIOs to play an increasingly visible role in the development of corporate strategy. Many are likely to expand their purview as organizations look to new technologies to drive operational efficiency, deliver top-line growth, and create a differentiated customer experience. CIOs also will continue to be agents of cultural change as they foster new ways of working and develop technology talent across their organizations. We look forward to the year ahead!
2/26/18
By Peter High, published on Forbes
Gill Haus is the Senior Vice President, Retail and Direct Bank Chief Information Officer at Capital One. In that role, he has overseen many of the changes that have made the Bank synonymous with digital innovation. He believes in having his team regularly experiment with the latest technology to judge applicability to the Bank and its objectives. He has overseen the development of innovation labs that further this mission.
Haus is familiar with the difficult work that companies that are larger and that have been in business for a generation or more must undertake in order to become digital ready. These include cultural changes, process changes, and technology changes. Haus has played a critical role in all three. In this interview, he highlights his excitement for artificial intelligence and blockchain, discusses the value that Capital One has gotten out of developing innovation labs, and more.
Peter High: Yours is a bank that is synonymous with innovation and the move towards digital technologies. Could you provide a bird’s eye view of the transformation that you have helped lead?
Gill Haus: It is like the common saying which is, “Technology changes everything.” If you think about Capital One and who we are, for us to be competitive and provide the services we want to our customers, we must keep up with emerging technologies.
Technologies like the cloud and machine learning are more commonly available than they have ever been in the past. The cost of entry for someone to compete with us is small and our competitive moat only helps to a certain point.
Our focus has been on systematically modernizing everything we do. That means we upgrade our legacy systems and go to the cloud. We have approached this in a few ways. One is making sure that we have the right talent on the ground and making sure that the talent has the tools and systems that they need and want to use.
It is one thing for us to say, “Come work at the bank,” which is already not that appetizing to a technologist.” It is another to say, “Come work in the bank, and you will be able to make your own projects if you have an idea.” “Come work in a bank. You will be the first to move the bank’s platform on to the cloud.” “Come to the bank. You will be able to explore different ways of using data, machine learning, etc.”
To read the full interview, please visit Forbes
Denis Robitaille has does not consider himself a technologist despite being the Global Chief Information Officer of the World Bank Group. He came to IT after a career in Operations at the Bank. When he ascended to his current role, first as acting CIO in November 2016 and then as the permanent CIO in June of 2017, he had profound understanding of how the World Bank operated.
He sees a profound connection between technology and the Bank’s mission to end extreme poverty by 2030 and boost prosperity for the bottom 40 percent of populations in every country. He also believes that Blockchain and artificial intelligence will have enormous impacts on the people who the World Bank serves. We cover all of the above and much more in this conversation.
Peter High: You are the second ever Global CIO of the World Bank. While you are not a technologist, you have tremendous operational experience and have done the “actual work” of the World Bank. The Bank’s mission is to end extreme poverty by 2030 and boost prosperity for the bottom 40 percent of populations in every country. What role does technology play in accomplishing these big goals?
Denis Robitaille: Technology is part of our daily life, and I think we are at the beginning of a big transformation in IT. The role of emerging technologies for development is important. There is a big movement at the World Bank Group to explore how disruptive emerging technologies can help development.
We are looking at how we can use technology in a positive way. The entire organization is mobilized behind this goal. For us in ITS, our focus is to support internal clients and operations and to partner with different parts of the World Bank Group to make sure that we can leverage emerging technology.
High: Yours is an organization that has also been going through a cloud transformation. Can you talk about the work going into building a more sustainable technology stack to support the work of the World Bank?
Robitaille: We are a little bit behind, but our objectives are the same. We have a large scale of legacy applications. Last year, we prepared a new three-year strategy. Part of this strategy is to bring some agility and move to the cloud.
We used to be a traditional IT shop of waterfall, and now I am introducing agile and DevOps combined. We want to enable our lines of business and deliver faster for our clients. When we look at our strategies and solutions for the business, we want to triage faster and deliver more flexibly.
2/5/18
Dover Corporation is a diverse $7 billion revenue company, with businesses in Energy, Engineered Systems, Fluids, and Refrigeration, and Food Equipment. Given this diversity, across the company’s 60 years, it had never had an enterprise chief information officer. That changed roughly two years ago when Dinu Parel was named to that post. In the time since, he has provided strategy, governance, and shared services to the traditionally decentralized IT function.
In this interview, Parel notes that his vision continues to be to allow the business units to have some latitude in selecting strategic technology, but two areas of focus on standardization have been security and infrastructure. He is currently focused on transforming IT from a traditional, back-office support function to an advisory function that helps drive business growth and innovative technologies such as Blockchain.
Peter High: You are the CIO of Dover Corporation, a diversified company with $7 billion in revenue. Could you provide an overview of the operations?
Dinu Parel: We are a diversified global manufacturer that provides product innovation. We are headquartered right outside of Chicago and have 29,000 employees around the world. We have a customer-focused business model. We are currently structured and organized into four segments.
Each of these segments has multiple operating companies that roll up under them and work directly with our end customers.Making decisions close to the customer while working on thousands of products enables and empowers an ownership mindset in the operating companies.
High: Dover Corporation is a very diverse set of businesses. How is IT organized?
Parel: Each operating company has an IT team that is responsible for providing the end-to-end IT function for the business. Each of the four segments has an IT leader, and a few key roles are consolidated at the segment level. Since I joined the company as the CIO, we have been on a transformation journey of establishing the enterprise organization from the ground up. For the enterprise organization, the vision is working with the operating companies and working with each of the segments to drive the enterprise strategy for IT, the governance, and providing centralized services.
It has been exciting for all of us who have been involved in this transformation because it is changing the historically decentralized IT operating model.
High: You were the first ever CIO at Dover Corporation. When you rose to the role two years ago, the organization had not had one in its 60 plus years of operation. What was the genesis of the role? How did the company conclude that time was right for a CIO?
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
