Master
ThoughtWorks
Menu
Close
  • What we do
    • Go to overview
    • Customer Experience, Product and Design
    • Data Strategy, Engineering and Analytics
    • Digital Transformation and Operations
    • Enterprise Modernization, Platforms and Cloud
  • Who we work with
    • Go to overview
    • Automotive
    • Healthcare
    • Public Sector
    • Cleantech, Energy and Utilities
    • Media and Publishing
    • Retail and E-commerce
    • Financial Services and Insurance
    • Not-for-profit
    • Travel and Transport
  • Insights
    • Go to overview
    • Featured

      • Technology

        An in-depth exploration of enterprise technology and engineering excellence

      • Business

        Keep up to date with the latest business and industry insights for digital leaders

      • Culture

        The place for career-building content and tips, and our view on social justice and inclusivity

    • Digital Publications and Tools

      • Technology Radar

        An opinionated guide to technology frontiers

      • Perspectives

        A publication for digital leaders

      • Digital Fluency Model

        A model for prioritizing the digital capabilities needed to navigate uncertainty

      • Decoder

        The business execs' A-Z guide to technology

    • All Insights

      • Articles

        Expert insights to help your business grow

      • Blogs

        Personal perspectives from ThoughtWorkers around the globe

      • Books

        Explore our extensive library

      • Podcasts

        Captivating conversations on the latest in business and tech

  • Careers
    • Go to overview
    • Application process

      What to expect as you interview with us

    • Grads and career changers

      Start your tech career on the right foot

    • Search jobs

      Find open positions in your region

    • Stay connected

      Sign up for our monthly newsletter

  • About
    • Go to overview
    • Our Purpose
    • Awards and Recognition
    • Diversity and Inclusion
    • Our Leaders
    • Partnerships
    • News
    • Conferences and Events
  • Contact
Global | English
  • United States United States
    English
  • China China
    中文 | English
  • India India
    English
  • Canada Canada
    English
  • Singapore Singapore
    English
  • United Kingdom United Kingdom
    English
  • Australia Australia
    English
  • Germany Germany
    English | Deutsch
  • Brazil Brazil
    English | Português
  • Spain Spain
    English | Español
  • Global Global
    English
Blogs
Select a topic
View all topicsClose
Technology 
Agile Project Management Cloud Continuous Delivery  Data Science & Engineering Defending the Free Internet Evolutionary Architecture Experience Design IoT Languages, Tools & Frameworks Legacy Modernization Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Microservices Platforms Security Software Testing Technology Strategy 
Business 
Financial Services Global Health Innovation Retail  Transformation 
Careers 
Career Hacks Diversity & Inclusion Social Change 
Blogs

Topics

Choose a topic
  • Technology
    Technology
  • Technology Overview
  • Agile Project Management
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Data Science & Engineering
  • Defending the Free Internet
  • Evolutionary Architecture
  • Experience Design
  • IoT
  • Languages, Tools & Frameworks
  • Legacy Modernization
  • Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence
  • Microservices
  • Platforms
  • Security
  • Software Testing
  • Technology Strategy
  • Business
    Business
  • Business Overview
  • Financial Services
  • Global Health
  • Innovation
  • Retail
  • Transformation
  • Careers
    Careers
  • Careers Overview
  • Career Hacks
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Social Change
TransformationTechnology StrategyBusinessTechnology

Reworking IT for Digital Success

Sriram Narayan Sriram Narayan

Published: May 26, 2015

In my previous post, I argued how IT has become strategic owing to the demands of a digital business. Strategic IT cannot justify itself with IT metrics such as velocity or even with delivering to plan. It has to make a difference to business outcomes.

Reworking IT for Digital Success

IT agility takes on a new meaning in this light. It is not enough to claim that our development teams are agile. Engineering agility and delivery process agility are necessary but not sufficient for digital success.

The table below explains this.
 

Level of Agility
Characteristics
Benefits
Shortcoming
Development team agility Continuous integration, TDD/BDD,
Scrum or equivalent
Sustainable velocity
Reliable UAT
Does not address upstream (shaping of feature) and downstream (taking it live) portions of the value stream
Dev+Ops team agility Continuous delivery. Automated build pipelines all the way to production. Frequent releases Typically only address things downstream of #1 since addressing the upstream requires co-operation of business.

The above illustrates the typical scope of IT agility, however, strategic IT also needs the following:
 

Level of Agility
Characteristics
Benefits
Shortcomings
Full product or solution team agility. Cross-functional team that includes product owners, designers and potentially even inside-sales and content marketers.
Truly iterative development (as opposed to being driven by release-plans).
Shorter end-to-end cycle times. Opportunity to shape a feature based on recent learnings from production. True market responsiveness may still be hamstrung by a deficit of organizational agility (explained below).
Business Agility. Product or capability centric IT (as opposed to project centric).
Org level emphasis on value over plan and on responsiveness over cost-efficiency.
True market responsiveness. NA

With respect to this table, the industry is all over the place. From the point of view of software development, I classify the IT industry as:

  1. Independent software vendors (ISVs): where software is the business.
  2. Internet businesses: where a software platform is the product, for example e-commerce and all sorts of aggregators.
  3. The rest of Enterprise IT: where IT serves the business from behind the scenes.

Large sections of enterprise IT are still struggling with #1 (development team agility) and #2 (DevOps). They claim to practice agile software development and DevOps but the actual realized benefits don’t match up. And while ISVs and Internet businesses are somewhat ahead of the curve, they frequently struggle with #3 and #4. Their attempts fall short of making the expected difference to business outcomes.

Why is this? Their governance doctrine, management controls and team structures are pre-agile and therefore not geared to deliver overall organizational agility. To improve organizational agility, we have to take structural, operational, cultural and political factors into consideration.

Structural change starts with an understanding of the relative merits and demerits of organizing by function. For example, given that IT by itself is a function, a matrix IT organization results in functional organization within a function and thus greatly hurts responsiveness. Operational change begins by recognizing that software development is a design process whereas we have usually attempted to govern it as a production process. Hence the traditional pursuit of predictability and disregard for actual benefits realized (value). Cultural change mostly results from changes to the way we work and changes in leadership behavior. Some deliberate intervention, however, is useful with regard to propagating desirable norms and a culture of purposeful, hierarchy-effacing communications.

It’s imperative that we revitalize IT beyond the DevOps team to prepare it for the digital world and we get there through a combination of changes to structure, operations, and culture.

This is described in detail in my upcoming book, Agile IT Organization Design. Check out a “rough cut” edition of the book on Safari and watch this space for an upcoming announcement of a free "final cut" sample chapter. 

Master
Privacy policy | Modern Slavery statement | Accessibility
Connect with us
×

WeChat

QR code to ThoughtWorks China WeChat subscription account
© 2021 ThoughtWorks, Inc.