Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders
Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.
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Insight
Agile methods provide a very efficient way to develop software. But efficiency is not the point. As we explore in this Executive Report, the point is that in the rush to experience the virtues of this effective development method, and the excitement of the surrounding publicity, an important question is left unanswered: Does efficient software development (read "agile") necessarily bring a real advantage to the owner of that software? A growing number of our clients are concerned about business value and that the software they take delivery of is not fully exploiting the potential value. To put it another way, there is real business value to be had, but the software development process alone does not deliver it. Clients complain about the lack of innovation coming from agile development teams, and they report that their new software is often not that different from the previous incarnation of the functionality -- a few extra bells and whistles, yes, but not the breakthrough implementation that delivers a significant business advantage.
Agile methods provide a very efficient way to develop software, but in the rush to experience the virtues of this effective development method, an important question is left unanswered: Does efficient software development (read "agile") necessarily bring a real advantage to the owner of that software? In the accompanying Executive Report, we explore this question.
Cloud computing discussions are fraught with apprehension about security, privacy, interoperability, reliability, and so on. While the advocates of cloud computing emphasize the importance of IT governance to address these issues,1 most of the practitioner literature is confined to surface-level analysis of the cloud computing concerns. Here I will focus on the nuances of some issues. In doing so, my first goal is to stimulate more thought about all issues that can mar cloud computing.
Tim Brown, president of the iconoclastic design firm IDEO, says that the question CEOs most often ask him is "How can I make my company more innovative?"1 It is a pervasive and frustrating concern driven by a marketplace that is demanding ever-higher levels of creative engagement.
Big initiatives require big thinking. Transformational initiatives magnify the struggles of a typical project: vague objectives, compressed timelines, scope creep, and communication issues. They also introduce their own unique challenges: vast stakeholder lists, extreme complexity, and unknown interdependencies. These undertakings require a different approach, a bigger type of thinking than for a traditional IT project.