Digital transformation fights

During digital transformation the biggest challenge is to convince people to change their current processes. Arguments are inevitable, after all you are inventing a new process. How to deal with emotions that will always accompany your transformation efforts?

Symptoms

• it is hard to propose a process that everyone would be happy with

• process owners spend lot of time traveling to various locations to organize workshops

• during some of the meetings people shout and leave slamming the doors

Negative results

• adoption of the new processes may be unsuccessful

• moths spend trying to resolve arguments

• leadership is blamed for all the problems

Causes

• different parts of organisation are working in different ways

• everyone wants to keep their current ways of working

• legacy systems require certain ways of working

This is my advice

Steps to perform

• split digital transformation into areas and agree these areas with all departments to get their buy-in

• create a list of responsibilities which make up certain area

• create a list of tasks which are necessary to fulfill certain responsibility

• invent together a business process for each such task using Task Description best practices

Positive results

• work on transformation is transparent and focused on results

• building agreement over ideal business processes

• same standard way for analysis of every area which is proven in other organisations - case study in medical industry

Challenges

• the need to adapt new, little known technique of Task Descriptions - take a training

• imposing discipline during meetings

The benefits of not changing anything

• same people may continue to work on solving process issues without distraction

• lack of consulting costs - first time creation of Task Descriptions is much simpler with help of experienced Requirements Engineer