4.1 BES Digital Business Strategy
A strong digital business strategy for BES considers the organization in its “as is” state compared to industry best practices to find a quality “to be” state that is tailored to the specialized needs of the BES PMO organization, its users and customers, and organizational culture. The BES Digital Strategy Team will conduct assessments across the BES PMO organizations to determine the current state. These assessments include the state of Agile adoption, understanding of the DevSecOps reference architecture, usage of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline processes within the IT organization, and the cultural perspective from various levels of the organization. These assessments will help the Team determine where to focus in each of five pillars – leadership buy-in and acceptance, technology, process, culture, innovation – to drive a larger digital transformation effort.
Each of the five pillars plays a significant role in driving digital transformation across an organization.
Leadership Buy-in and Acceptance: The Team will start by understanding the current viewpoint of leadership to understand the “as is” state of the organization and where leadership wants the organization to be within a set period of time. Having leadership buy-in and acceptance of a digital transformation effort is critical to a cultural shift.
Technology: Often time, organizations have an excess of technology approaches. Once an assessment of the CI/CD pipeline capabilities is complete, the Team will also understand the tool usage within the organization and create a path for stronger adoption toward the DevSecOps reference architecture.
Process: One of the struggles organizations often have in adopting DevSecOps is the lack of process improvement. The Team will use the Agile assessment to help drive better Agile adoption. Further, the Team will review all processes in the DevSecOps lifecycle to understand where improvements can be made, how automation can be implemented, and when each process can be successfully implemented.
Culture: One of the most difficult pieces to an organizational transformation is that of culture change. A digital strategy considers various ways to help drive organizational culture change. Using the assessments, the Team will understand the viewpoints throughout the organization on the current state and the desire for change. Using this information, the Team will implement various techniques to help drive change, such as brown bag sessions, innovation sessions, empathetic training, and more. What techniques are implemented will be discussed with leadership to ensure all activities meet the needs and desires to drive culture change.
Innovation: A key to digital transformation is the desire to drive innovation. Innovation is often used as a buzzword and taken less seriously. As part of the culture change pillar, innovation opportunities will also be implemented, helping to drive a culture of continuous improvement, continuous learning, and continuous experimentation. By driving that mentality, the ability to try new emerging technology and implement it at a larger scale becomes more acceptable with reduced risk and concern.
The BES Digital Strategy Team will create a roadmap of adoption in each of the five (5) pillars as well as a strategy that focuses on the most important factors for each pillar. All activities will be approved and fully supported by leadership. Having a clear roadmap that is highly communicated throughout the organization helps drive understanding and adoption. Furthermore, as the Team executes on the roadmap and strategy, all activities will be measured and tracked. Metrics are important to show the success or failure factors, which, in turn, helps drive iterative improvement in the strategy. The strategy and roadmap will be reviewed quarterly to ensure the organization is on track based on metrics. If changes need to be made, it is done iteratively and with leadership buy-in, approval, and open communication. By focusing on open communication and an iterative approach, the organization will be able to move forward with a successful digital transformation.