On the 7th May a group of senior IT professionals joined Triad and Techpros.io to discuss different aspects of business strategy and how digital transformation goals have changed the business environment.
According to research firm Axelos, whilst 70% of IT professionals report having a clear understanding of their company’s strategy, only 41% believe that the work they do is aligned with that strategy.
The discussion covered the challenge of alignment, best practices and topics such as:
- Educating senior management on the business possibilities of new technologies
- Strategy and implementation in a constantly changing business environment
- Stakeholder alignment, metrics and reporting
- Technology and partner selection and solution design
- Development methodologies, people and process considerations
Overall, there is a feeling that senior leaders hold the key to success and that engagement with digital transformation agendas; such as spending the time with key teams to participate in regular reviews pays huge dividends. Not only does it set an example to the rest of the business, reducing resistance and increasing acceptance that change is happening, smarter objectives and clearer signals of what’s working or not, with the associated lessons, lead to significantly improved outcomes.
Value was also a recurring and important theme; how it is defined, how it changes over time and its relevance to each individual and their role. The group also saw significant value in using burning boats – setting organisations’ legacy crutches on fire to focus everyone wholeheartedly on pushing ahead with the transformation, in an all or nothing approach.
It also feels to many that digital transformation and ways of working are converging such is the pervasiveness and benefits of the digital dimension.
Aside from that many good project practices remain; communication, transparency and establishing trust in the new digital world.
