Start smarter: How to identify your digital transformation exemplar

Digital transformation initiatives often fail not because of a lack of vision, but because of their overwhelming scale or a poorly chosen starting point. So, while executives know the importance of change, the path is fraught with uncertainties.

 

How do you launch a transformation that builds momentum, proves value and navigates the inevitable challenges without jeopardizing the entire enterprise? The key lies not just in starting small, but in starting smart — by meticulously selecting an exemplar that acts as a "pathfinder" for your transformation journey.

 

An exemplar isn't just a pilot; it’s a strategic probe, a focused initiative designed to test new ways of working, technologies and team structures within a confined scope. It serves as a vital source of insight and guidance. It can reduce risk and uncover unknowns in areas including finance, stakeholder buy-in and change management before a full-scale rollout.

 

The question is, how do you choose that crucial first initiative?

 

(Read here how TBC Bank benefitted from an exemplar to reinvigorate their digital transformation.)

Our experience: The success of an exemplar-led transformation hinges directly on a rigorous and insightful selection process that moves beyond guesswork and pet projects to identify the initiative with the optimal blend of business impact (what value it brings to the business), feasibility (how likely it is to succeed) and relatability (how well it resonates with the broader organization).

Choosing the wrong exemplar can be counterproductive because any failed exemplar can harm — or even kill — the momentum of your transformation:

 

• Pick something too complex or unfeasible and you risk early failure, reinforcing skepticism. 

• Pick something too specialized or abstract, and people outside the immediate team will struggle to see how the changes could apply to their work. 

• Conversely, pick something too trivial, and you fail to demonstrate meaningful impact or inspire broader change. 

 

The goal is to find the sweet spot — an initiative significant enough to matter, achievable enough to succeed and understandable enough to resonate. This requires a structured approach, moving from broad exploration to focused evaluation.

 

From gut feeling to objective selection

 

Simply asking for suggestions often leads to a list of pet projects, shiny new ideas and 'noisy' problems dominated by recency bias. A more effective approach involves a structured exploration phase to identify and map your business and technology landscape, surfacing areas ripe for transformation. We refer to this phase as ‘discovery’.

Step one: Creating an initial overview

 

To select the most fitting candidate, you must first fully understand the range of possibilities. To comprehensively map your terrain, employ established techniques such as customer journey mapping and domain modeling. These methods help guide discussions and articulate your organizational landscape, providing a clear overview of your choices. At this initial stage, it is acceptable for the areas you identify to be broad as long as their core purpose and business relevance are understood. (If you want to dive deeper into this topic, Ben Cremer recently wrote an extensive article about how to comprehensively map your product landscape.) 

 

• Journey mapping: By tracing customer interactions across various touchpoints, you can uncover pain points, inefficiencies and opportunities for digital intervention to create substantial value. Cross-functional workshops are crucial here, where you can map steps across different business units and surface hidden dependencies or points where scope may overlap, helping minimize duplication across the organisation.

   

• Domain modeling: This involves creating a shared understanding and representation of your business domains — the core products, services and capabilities you offer. This process often reveals a surprising lack of common language across departments but is essential for identifying product boundaries and dependencies. It helps pinpoint strategically important products and their supporting internal platforms.

 

(Note that these are just two techniques that we’ve used successfully with our clients. Feel free to apply other frameworks with similar concepts instead!)

 

After a few sessions with the right stakeholder groups, an unrefined overview will emerge. At this stage, cast a wide net and capture everything from customer-facing improvements to internal process optimizations. Try not to narrow the scope prematurely to avoid bias and also allow for unexpected opportunities. However, be careful to also timebox your activities, and have a shared understanding of how detailed you need to be before you can continue the selection process. Finally, make sure to link all product areas back to broader company objectives and strategic goals to allow for objective decisions.

 

Step two: Applying three lenses to find the best overall candidate

 

With a set of potential candidates, the actual selection process begins. Each candidate is evaluated using a set of defined lenses and criteria: This isn't about intuition; it's about a disciplined assessment. Building on the established prioritization approach using an impact versus effort/feasibility assessment, we include a third, vital lens: relatability.

 

Business impact: Does it matter?

 

This lens is used to identify the most impactful product areas, boiling down the longlist to a prioritized shortlist of candidates. Identify relevant key business metrics and rank product area ideas. Using either absolute (A is best, B is second best) or relative (A brings in more revenue than B, but B creates a bigger market share than A) scoring allows for objective prioritization that’s easy to communicate and agree on.

 

• Key questions: How well does it align with my company strategy? How does this product area affect key business metrics? 

   

• Assessment: Identify the three to five areas with the biggest potential to 'move the needle'. Quantify the impact where possible (e.g., potential revenue uplift, cost savings, customer retention). Look for an area with a decent impact, that could be measurable within three to four months, but not so mission-critical that an experimental 'failure' would be devastating. 

 

Feasibility: Can it be done in a reasonable amount of time?

 

This gauges the likelihood of success and the effort required. It requires an honest conversation around the current state and potential shortcomings. Ask these questions for all shortlist product areas to understand their likelihood of success. 

 

Key questions:

 

• Product: How well-defined is the problem or opportunity? Is there a clear vision and scope? Do we have a clear link between scope and company objectives? You can’t showcase improved delivery if you do not know why you build what you are building.

 

• Technology: Is the tech stack ready for a 'carve-out' and fast-paced development, or are major refactoring or migration efforts needed first? Can the team operate with minimal dependencies? If the underlying tech estate is not set up for autonomous delivery, you will fail to show value creation because you are blocked by dependencies to slower-paced teams.

• Organization: Can you easily identify and secure a dedicated product owner (PO) and tech lead (TL)? Do we have the right skills available, and can we free them up without major disruption? What organizational hurdles exist? Obviously, without the right skills and people on the team, it’s hard to drive value creation. Avoid a smeared start with staged onboarding dates, because every new team member might reset the stages of team forming. 

• Assessment: Score the most impactful areas identified above relatively against each other rather than using absolute ratings. This makes it easier to order them and articulate why one is more feasible than another. Be honest about red flags; organizational challenges (like the availability of key team members) or tech stack readiness are often the biggest hurdles. Don't try to force a transformation where foundational prerequisites are missing as this usually leads to major delays, and risks loss of organizational momentum.

 

Relatability: Do people care?

 

This dimension is specific to exemplars and crucial for change management. It assesses whether the chosen area will serve as a compelling showcase, inspiring others to adopt new ways of working. Again, ask these questions for each of the most impactful areas identified.

 

Key questions:

 

• Do people in the wider organization understand the existing challenges in this product area? Do they care? Can they translate the changes to their own work? Does the change have the potential to create an "I want this too" effect?

   

• Assessment: Avoid areas that are too obscure or complex for most people to understand, like highly specialized back-office systems or advanced analytics. Similarly, internal products like platforms or APIs can also be less relatable. Aim for something fundamental enough that its improvement will be widely recognized and appreciated, and where leaders can easily create a compelling story around the impact of the change.

 

Most likely, a large number can be disqualified early and without too much research. The remaining candidates are ranked, and the most promising ones are brought forward for the final decision. Experience shows that three to four options with a clear recommendation is best for a focused discussion. It’s likely that all these options will satisfy the needed criteria, so don’t fall into analysis paralysis aiming for the best selection.

 

Step three: Making the Call

 

By evaluating candidates through these three lenses, a clear recommendation should emerge. This should be one not based on gut feeling or personal preferences but instead a rigorous and objective selection.

 

However, it’s not about purely executing a mechanical process: group discussion and leadership judgment are still vital to ensure we come up with the best possible selection. 

 

Once a decision is made, it needs strong leadership alignment and commitment to stay the course. Remember, the exemplar is still an experiment that might struggle or even fail. Particularly when things don’t go as planned, it’s important the leadership team focuses on learning and adjusting, and not on questioning the transformation itself.

 

A glimpse ahead

 

Choosing the exemplar is a critical step, but it's just the starting point. The next stage is what we call ‘mobilization’, which involves the ramp-up and inception phases to get the teams ready for their first delivery sprint.

• Ramp-up: This phase includes a number of key activities to shape the future team, such as nominating key roles (product owner, tech lead and relevant SMEs), defining the roadmap and target architecture, designing the team structure, nominating the actual people for the team and creating a transition plan. A thorough feasibility assessment builds the foundation for this next level of detail.

   

• Inception: Once the full team is nominated and ready to go, this intense week aims to kick-start the team: align everybody on vision, roadmap and objectives, agree on ways of working and begin to bond as team members — essential steps for building a high-performing unit.

 

Once the team is live, an enablement and support phase ensures they receive the coaching and assistance needed to overcome early hurdles and embed new practices. During the exemplar runtime, leadership also closely monitors for any obstacles or other learnings that might be relevant for the next wave of transformations. These activities can be scaled down or stopped as soon as the newly formed team has settled enough to be the new business as usual, which is where the exemplar phase officially ends.

 

Choose your ‘pathfinder’ wisely

 

A digital transformation is a significant undertaking. Its success doesn't start with a grand, all-encompassing plan, but with a single, well-chosen step. By investing the time and rigor into a structured discovery and selection process — leveraging tools like journey mapping and applying the critical lenses of impact, feasibility and relatability — you can ensure your first step, your exemplar, is the right one. 

 

This isn't just about picking a project; it's about choosing the pathfinder that will successfully guide your entire organization through the complexities of transformation, building the confidence, capabilities and momentum needed to reach your strategic destination.

 

Choose wisely and set the stage for a transformation that truly delivers.