This study focuses on a Fortune 100 apparel/sportswear enterprise that had success incubating their model and is currently in the scaling stage of enterprise product transformation. It follows the Seven Domains of Transformation as laid out in this previous post. Transformation Implementation This enterprise started incubating their transformation in their digital and customer-facing portfolios. They had strong leadership there that had previous experience moving to a product-centric model and … [Read more...]
Taking a Fresh Look at Enterprise Business Systems
A group of industry experts tackled the challenge of ERP updating as part of the 2020 DevOps Enterprise Forum. This team (Pat Birkeland, Adrian Cockcroft, Damon Edwards, Chris Kernaghan, Courtney Kissler, Scott nasello, Ron Olshausen, and Jim Sherwin) was primarily trying to offer guidance to enterprises about how they may think about the impact that digital transformation (DevOps, Lean, etc.) is placing on incumbent business systems (such as ERPs and middleware) within their integrated … [Read more...]
Project to Product Transformation Case Study: Fortune 100 Retail Enterprise
This study focuses on a Fortune 100 retail enterprise that demonstrated sustained progression through the three stages of enterprise product transformation. Transformation Implementation Their journey began with grassroots experimentation in a small number of technology teams within the digital and API platform organizations. As initial success was seen in this experimentation, they also spanned their new practices across a few mainframe and monolithic applications. The initial focus of the … [Read more...]
Making a Case for Continuous Improvement
The Constant Need for Change Many organizations often unknowingly exhibit complacency and only incorporate significant change when a crisis or imminent threat emerges. This is especially true in organizations that have had success in the past. In this excerpt of the Change in a Successful Organization whitepaper from Michael Winslow, Tamara Ledbetter, Adam Zimman, John Esser, Tim Judge, and Carmen DeArdo, we'll explore how to answer the following questions without a crisis: How do you create … [Read more...]
Project to Product Transformation Case Study: Global Media Service Provider
The case concerns a multinational corporation providing business support systems via a SaaS model (SaaS-based multi-tenant back end). Their most important product is customer care systems to large service companies in the healthcare and telecommunications markets. The company is by design product-centric (workforce management, customer care, billing, order management, messaging). It is heavily standardized, but products are customized for larger customers. This foundation made the scaling and … [Read more...]
Culture and Leadership: The Seven Domains of Transformation
This is part of our Seven Domains of Transformation series, which has been adapted from the Project to Product Transformation white paper by Ross Clanton, Amy Walters, Jason Zubrick, Pat Birkeland, Mik Kersten, Alan Nance, and Anders Wallgren. You can download and read the white paper in its entirety here. Why Is Culture and Leadership Important? A product-centric operating model requires high levels of empowerment, collaboration, and experimentation. As Peter … [Read more...]
Architecture: The Seven Domains of Transformation
Why Is Architecture Important? Architecture exists within applications, solutions, and the enterprise, whether time, effort, and resources are allocated to it or not. Architectures evolve over time just like most processes and organizational priorities. To enable delivery teams to operate at their highest velocity and remove as many impediments as possible, a focus on architectural improvement and streamlining your product delivery capabilities is crucial. You must ensure that the transformation … [Read more...]
Funding Model: The Seven Domains of Transformation
Why Is the Funding Model Important? In traditional project-based technology organizations, funding for the technology group is derived by executive leadership based on a prioritization schedule of big-ticket items stacked up against historical overhead expenditures. This budgeting exercise is a painful process and is nothing more than a wild guess at how much funding will be necessary to meet the needs of their business counterparts. This common practice results in management struggling to … [Read more...]
Workforce and Talent: The Seven Domains of Transformation
Why Is Workforce and Culture Important? Traditionally, organizations have been based on hierarchies with decisions made at the top, with detailed direction flowing downward through multiple management layers to the teams. Traditional enterprise structures organized employees by functional specialty departments, each with their own work intake mechanisms, procedures, and goals. Work was heavily governed by a traditional Project Management Office (PMO) focused on prioritizing the work for … [Read more...]
Product Taxonomy: The Seven Domains of Transformation
Why Is Product Taxonomy Important? Shifting to a product operating model starts with defining the products, which includes both internally facing and externally facing products. Defining the products is essential to identifying clear lines of ownership and accountability, and redesigning the organizational structure to align with customer needs instead of settling for traditional organizations that align around IT functions. When looking across the fourteen companies interviewed, it became clear … [Read more...]
