To those you might think “kid, go home – it is not so easy” - you are totally right. The fun thing about my last years between business and technology is that I never had to ask for forgiveness for things we didn’t even think about asking for permission. So give me try to tell you why making bold decision is easier as you think.

1. Experience is everything. Really.

Surely nothing new, but I’m still wondering why the most corporate applications feel like traveling with a 80 years old bus somewhere in nowhere with some hens beside you while fearing for your life. A valid way to (finally) fix it, is to really go for a product oriented organization where business and IT are no longer separated and the customer/ user is in the center of all activities. Just stop every organizational hickup that hinders our UX people to design stunning experiences.

2. Open your arms and say hello to developer all over the world. Try to be as dev-ops friendly as tech company benchmarks. Tech talents are the key of your digital success. But imagine these tech talents do not want to work with you because they don’t give a shit on your rules or historically grown structures. Just open your architecture to a modular strategy, be API-friendly, be open for open source or any emerging technologies and start exploring what IT part really makes you unique (would wonder if infrastructure, central services or any data transfer would be on that list).

3. Integrate policy engines. I know, 3 seconds ago I said open your doors and don’t be so corporate. Introducing policy engines might sound super corporate but will let you sleep like a baby every night. A solid setup with policies that make sense in a digital world are totally accepted by the dev community and secure your business.

4. Support your IT business by data – do not dig your data grave. The fun thing about data in IT is that it is available everywhere at any time. Unfortunately I only saw a few steering setups that really supported the management in making the right tech decisions. Mostly there are hundreds of lists or report that somehow describe your current situation. But what was quite cool for the late 90s is quite outdated 2018, isn’t it? Derive your business and digital strategy to your technology scorecard by not using more than 5 KPIs. With the use of artificial intelligence you can build an IT steering that helps you to do top of the hill tech decisions.

5. Break boundaries between stacks – just be bold, even when it hurts. Mostly, as a result of traditional domain oriented organizations these domains are as closed as Mordor never has been. It is essentially to break down these boundaries to leverage the full potential for your product teams. As stated earlier no customer, no user, no developer and nobody of the management gives a shit about why a product is not running. Just bury the old stuff and focus on things you really need. Also means that this will trigger the most intense people transformation program in the whole game.

As said at the beginning, nothing new but still rarely seen in the current IT departments. Agilization programs, API projects or reshaping your business intelligence are a nice start but will surely not guarantee to win the digital endgame.

Be courageous, break your legacy and go all in - princess Daisy is counting on you.

#api #opensource #digitaltransformation #devops #productorientation #digitalendgame