EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation

One thing we have learned from clients is that often processes, practices, or software systems that have been competitive differentiators become competitive anchors. A large financial company based its success on a core software application that agents used when working with clients and prospects. The application was so complex that the company cou

Thin slicing starts with understanding the end-to-end customer journey, defining clear customer goals, mapping outcomes or features at each step in the journey, and then relatively prioritizing thin slices that can be released to the customer for validation and feedback. This creates the “build, measure, learn” loop in agile delivery. During the fi

For long-time organizations with high technical debt, a strategy to rewrite existing software applications won’t work—it’s just too expensive. Plus, rewriting without making the necessary technical and organizational transformations is a waste of money. Your strategy needs to be a well–considered “layered” strategy where the layers are time.

Having an LVT aligned around outcomes and an organization aligned around functions is a misalignment of people to desired outcomes.

Compliance interactions have very little trust. Therefore, both parties try to protect themselves from “fault” by having a detailed agreement (in many cases, a contract) and following that agreement even when they know it won’t produce the desired outcome.

While working on the LVT and MoS, the product people on the team and within the product organization are concurrently developing product blueprints to ensure that over the longer term the team, management, and customers have an understanding of how you intend to evolve your products. Organizational structures will also change as businesses morph fr

The first component of a responsive enterprise is an executive vision that expresses how the organization intends to prosper in the future.

Agile leaders need the courage to view issues from different perspectives, to gather data without undue prejudice, to formulate both/and rather than either/or resolutions. Too few organizations make it past what we have labeled “prescriptive agility,” which should be an oxymoron, but unfortunately isn’t. These organizations are as rigid about their

You can’t plan away uncertainty; you need to experiment it away.