‘Guerrilla Digitisation’: The 10 steps to agile and pragmatic, technology enabled business transformation

1.Don't attempt to conclude comprehensive requirements before you start. They will likely be wrong as you don't have the contact with the issues to know it all yet. You will learn as you go and this will shape and mature your understanding. A comprehensive requirements process will sound compelling but will take time and cost and will not be right. Consequently you will pay double or triple and then deliver the wrong solution late. The recovery from this in terms of costs and reputation will be dear. Rigid requirements create a strait jacket.

2.You need an agile and flexible process, low cost and low risk where your personal learning and that of your team can keep pace. This means being uncomfortably imprecise at the start and utilising end of desk, rapid iteration to mature the requirement as you go.

3.However, have a good vision on where you want to get to. Like many things a good destination and eyes up, keeps you well attached and on course to deliver the future.

4.Get a small team to help you, they will be lean and will more likely deliver to the timetable. A lean team ensures focus is concentrated, reliable communications are easier with less errors and misunderstandings, less briefings. Things stay synched.

5.Get involved yourself - Short frequent contact to course steer the programme is better than 3 monthly reviews and you need to experience the digitisation and change first hand, to know how to overcome issues and embed the value

6.Have intense iteration. You will see the results unfold and be able to course correct frequently. Use prototyping and insist on early visualisation.

7.For digitisation to work several things need to change - data process, people's skills and attitudes, business process and adapting and accepting the new technology - tough for some as it brings new transparency and single, shared information. Do these in parallel and integrated so it is clear that this is a transformation / business change programme, but nonetheless a technology driven one. Parallelism gives crucial lateral and continuous feedback.

8.The Initial Operating Capability is an iceberg, this is when the real work begins, deployment and implementation activity is vital, you cannot switch on the digital process and expect the value to instantly flow. It takes effort & a skilled team to overcome the challenges in bullet 7

9.Get serious about business outcomes, these will act as your guiding light. Measure them, track them and feedback across the levels on their achievement to create a virtuous cycle of collaboration

10.Start small, get going quickly and don't wait, there will be a hundred reasons given as to why you cannot move, none outweigh the current inefficiencies, which are the anchors currently and often imperceptibly, slowing the organisation down

Visit the website and watch the video: www.moodinternational.com