{"id":28031,"date":"2019-10-10T11:11:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T10:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/?p=28031"},"modified":"2019-10-10T16:13:33","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T15:13:33","slug":"how-agile-delivery-power-digital-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/how-agile-delivery-power-digital-transformation\/","title":{"rendered":"How agile delivery can power digital transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Business leaders, industry strategists, academics, and policy makers are all scrambling to make sense of digital transformation and to define strategies for success in our increasingly digital economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a series of 4 articles,\u00a0<\/span>based on my latest book<\/span><\/a>, I will look at the importance of the leader\u2019s role in delivering digital transformation in today\u2019s digital economy. I believe there are three <\/span>key\u2019s<\/span> to success;\u00a0Agility, Innovation, and Disciplined Management.<\/span><\/p>\n

Part <\/span>2<\/span>: <\/span>Becoming an Agile Organisation<\/span><\/h4>\n

In <\/span>th<\/span>is<\/span> second<\/span> article, I <\/span>review the context for agile practices and address what it means to increase agility within an organisation and across an ecosystem of partner organisations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s organisations are increasingly under pressure to respond ever more quickly to the needs of their customers and broader stakeholders. Not only is the drive for increased flexibility resulting in more new products being brought to market faster, it is also accelerating the evolution of existing solutions and services. Handling such change is critical for business success, driven by external factors such as market fluctuations, new technologies, competitive offerings, and new laws. <\/span><\/p>\n

The instability driving business change has become a dominant issue for many organisations. The disruption that digital transformation triggers within a market context of fast-paced evolution have analogies in military combat<\/span>.<\/span> In recent years, much military strategy has focused on techniques appropriate for extremely fluid situations with unprecedented, confusing scenarios. These situations are referred to with the acronym VUCA, <\/span>Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and <\/span>Ambiguity<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dealing with VUCA<\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>raditional problem-solving approaches seek to optimise the stable aspects of strategy to control variations and anomalies. VUCA situations are, however, characterised by their lack of uniformity and therefore require approaches that recognise and thrive in conditions of inherent instability. But change cannot mean chaos. Every organisation\u2019s activities, <\/span>in <\/span>particular, its<\/span> changes to ongoing ways of working, must be governed by a plethora of formal and informal procedures, practices, processes, and regulations<\/span>.<\/span> These governance mechanisms are essential to the organisation\u2019s success in managing and controlling how products and services are delivered into production, maintained, evolved, and brought to end-of-life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much has been learned over the past two decades to offer a clear direction in agile delivery. The rapid evolution of digital technology and resulting digital transformation activities have forced organisations to invest in techniques that remove friction and increase flexibility in their delivery approaches, without abandoning all forms of control. They face pressure in balancing their delivery capabilities across four key dimensions:<\/span><\/p>\n