How to Survive and Thrive in a Transformation

I have the pleasure of offering a workshop titled “How to Survive and Thrive in a Digital Transformation” at the Building Business Capability conference in April.

The premise of the presentation is many tech enabled enterprises are going through transformations and individual contributors, especially business analysts, often get the short end of the stick.

My intent is to show that people have some control over how transformations impact them, but they have to be their own advocate and not hang tenaciously onto a specific role.

The session is by necessity focused on business analysts because Building Business Capability is a business analysis focused conference.

That said, the techniques I describe in the session apply to anyone who is working on internal products.

Out of a desire for efficiency (and because I’m strapped for time) I decided to build the session “in public”. So over the next few weeks, issues of InsideProduct will feature key ideas from the presentation.

One reason to build in public is to get actionable feedback, so that’s where you fit in. If you see ideas that resonate, or wonder what on earth I’m talking about, hit reply and let me know.

This week, I’m sharing information on transformations, which helps set the foundation for the overall session.

The Transformation Trifecta

Over the past 20 years, tech-enabled enterprises (organizations that use and build a lot of software, but don’t sell it) have made a hobby of going through one, or multiple transformations.

These transformations come about because of the organization feeling the need to react to changes in its environment, or get out ahead of those changes.

Some organizations transform in response to a real or perceived existential threat.

I’ve observed several of these transformations, and was even part of subjecting people to them for a while, and I noticed they have gone through an evolution from agile to digital to product, which I refer to as the Transformation Trifecta.

Agile transformations came first. The information technology department usually sparked these transformations, wanting to improve the way they developed software. Somewhere along the way, they forgot to truly bring their business friends along.

The best outcome from these transformations were software development teams that built software in the right way fairly quickly, but there was no guarantee that it was the right software.

Then digital transformations came along as organizations sought ways to allow their customers to engage directly with their business processes in order to improve their experience. These efforts usually involved technology and were an initial attempt to get all those efficient software developers building the right things.

A few digital transformations also incorporate a change to a product operating model in order to experience the benefits they thought they’d get from “going agile” but didn’t completely experience. Product transformations change how organizations view software development that it builds for its own use and borrows techniques formerly used for software that organizations sold (ahem… product management).

How transformations affect business analysts

Transformations require organizations to change how they operate and how they’re structured. Inevitably, that means that some folks will move to different teams, take different jobs, or leave the company altogether (not always by choice).

There seems to be a sense in the business analysis community that the latter has happened to them disproportionately when transformations come around. Especially the agile ones.

I haven’t experienced seeing all the business analysts getting let go in an organization going through an agile transformation, but I’ve heard enough stories to know that it has happened.

I have seen my share of poorly thought out role shifting where people in one role are on mass shifted to a different role when an organization under went an agile transformation.

More often than not, the poorly thought out changes are because of organizations taking the advice of people calling themselves coaches who may not have actual agile experience and therefore get caught up in the boilerplate approach.

All the same, it happened, and it continues to happen, so it’s not surprising that business analysts view any kind of transformation with skepticism.

What business analysts should do

Fortunately, digital transformations offer great opportunities for business analysts to prove their value to the organization and become key players in transformation efforts.

Successful digital efforts require an understanding of your customers and their needs. Your customers don’t have to use the products you put together as part of a digital transformation, so you need to understand their needs and design a solution that they will want to use.

You need to understand the customer journey. You need to know the characteristics of your customers so you know when they are most likely to use your product. This is product management.

You need to have a solid understanding of your organization’s business processes, rules, and data to know how to incorporate a customer-facing interface. You need to understand how everything fits together. This is business analysis.

But you can’t expect that organizations are going to expect a business analyst to do those things. It’s usually because they don’t understand what some business analysts are capable of.

You could spend the time and energy to convince folks in your organizations that business analyst could do those things. But you’re not guaranteed to succeed and by the time the opportunity to get involved meaningfully may have passed you by.

You’re much better off to not get hung up on titles. Figure out the role that best fits your interest. Start with the skills you have, and figure out what you need to adjust to move into the new world.

Here are a few articles that look at digital transformations from a few different angles with an undercurrent of where business analysis plays an important part.

Does Your Organization Need Digital Transformation?

When the world shut itself down in March 2020, the question whether a digital transformation was necessary was a no-brainer.

If your organization wanted to survive and thrive while everyone was social distancing, you had to take a long, hard look at all of your customer interactions. It made sense to move as many of those interactions online as possible. If not the entire interaction, at least most of it as possible.

In those days, digital transformation bordered on a survival strategy. To move your customer interactions to the digital sphere, you had to change how you run your business.

Now that we’re on the other side of the pandemic and we’re (sometimes begrudgingly) getting back to in-person interaction, the decision to embark on a digital transformation is not so clear. The burning platform of no physical interactions no longer exists, so it doesn’t outweigh the time, cost, and pain that can go along with a digital transformation.

To help you determine if a digital transformation makes sense for your org, here’s a look at what digital transformations are, the pros and cons of digital transformations, and signs you may need a digital transformation at your organization.

How Organizations Approach Enterprise Digital Transformation

As your customers look at their smartphones as their primary tool to shop, get entertainment, and keep in touch with friends and family, they expect the same experience in all aspects of their life. They expect the same experience when checking a bank balance, filing an insurance claim, or making a car payment. Furthermore, they want to make themselves a natural part of your business processes. Large organizations respond to this need through enterprise digital transformations.

Above all, digital transformations are challenging. You’re asking every part of your business to change how they operate. The larger your organization, the more people, teams, and processes are involved, which makes the transformation more complicated.

The large number of customers and transactions a digital transformation affects means you can see some significant benefits.

The folks at ProductPlan look at enterprise digital transformations and how to make them successful given the added complexity of large businesses.

How to Use the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework to Support Digital Transformation

The great thing about using software in a business setting is that there’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish with enough time and effort.

That’s also the downside to using software in a business setting. Because you can do just about anything, you become buried in all the possibilities. This is a problem that companies amid digital transformations often run into. There are so many business processes you could apply digital technologies to, it’s often difficult to know where to begin.

Then again, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Fortunately, there are some tools you can use to help you focus on the processes that you should include in your digital transformation–those processes that provide benefits to your customers. One of those tools is the jobs-to-be-done framework.

The folks at ProductPlan look at how you can use the jobs-to-be-done framework to focus your digital transformation efforts in the right direction.

How do you improve business processes as part of a digital transformation?

When you work in an internal product setting, you’ll often revisit existing business processes and look for ways to make them more effective. This usually involves improving the interactions your customers have with those processes and automating some or all of the process.

Some times that work is part of a digital transformation.

Whether you call it that is not necessarily important. The key is to improve the business process in a way that allows you to deliver more value to your customers.

Here are some techniques you can use to improve business processes in a way that adds value to your customers and streamlines the business process for your organization.

These techniques help you build a shared understanding about what you’re trying to accomplish and the business process itself. Once you understand that, you can work collaboratively to identify areas for improvement in the business process.

Product Management for Information Technology

As digital and product transformations become more common, more Information Technology (IT) departments view their software assets as products that deserve ongoing investment and attention from a consistent, dedicated team. As IT departments change the way they operate, the role of product management for information technology is becoming much more common inside those areas of companies.

Product management in IT can be very similar to product management in other settings, but there are some key differences as well. Here’s a look at the product management role in IT and why it’s an important role from now on.

Thanks for reading

Thanks again for reading InsideProduct.

If you have any comments or questions about the newsletter, or there’s anything you’d like me to cover, let me know.

Talk to you next time,

Kent J. McDonald Founder | KBP.Media