Imagine what could you achieve if IT delivered faster than business demand: you could try out new products or enhancements on target segments of users and act fast on real-time feedback. You’d be a hero – and not the kind that has to stay up all night fixing code.
Our blog, ‘5 Questions to ask that will help Boost Agile Product Delivery¹’ had C-level executives, architects, and program managers asking us how they could help their teams release multiple times per day without impacting quality. What became clear was that many organisations do not fully understand their existing capability or how to continually improve towards their target maturity.
Pinpointing your position
Based on the conversations we had, industry research to date, and the engagements that followed we developed the Estafet Digital Transformation Maturity Model. Designed to bring together management and key team members to discuss how software is delivered and any problems faced, its five levels provide a means to identify your maturity status and decide what to do next. The table below offers a flavour of how it works – you can find out how to request the full model at the end of this article.
The Estafet Digital Transformation Maturity Model
From burn-out to fast feature releases
The Maturity Model illustrates what is happening at each level for teams and management; from ‘Heroic’ where individuals are burning out and releases are not meeting business needs, through to ‘Value-Driven’ where the process is so effective that decisions are made based on quantifiable business value. As an organisation moves through the model, individuals and departments become less important because silos (Dev, QA, Ops, Sec, BA) are replaced by multi-skilled teams. The end result is that everyone understands the value chain: how ideas become live features.
Leveraging technology
For any team to get to Responsive (level 4) they will need the right technology in place to drive and communicate delivery. Don’t get consumed by acquiring and configuring technology, the work needs to be done but the delivery of the new product is where business value is found. Opensource has plenty to offer and for the enterprise, a PaaS like Red Hat OpenShift gives you all the tools you need. If you combine this with a delivery framework like boostcd.io you get Continuous Delivery out of the box and have probably saved yourself 6 months of configuration, process definition, and a large portion of your budget.
Developing fluency in value-based conversations
By aligning all stakeholders on fast and fluent value delivery, teams start to think about how technology achieves the business goals. This includes keeping batch sizes small to cut complexity and delay; adding monitoring for fast feedback so you can find and fix problems quickly; and developing flexible automation throughout to eliminate manual error.
Seeding culture across the enterprise
You may have multiple teams at different levels of maturity. Rather than trying to change the entire organisation at once, seedless mature teams with individuals who are used to working at a minimum of Level 4.
A value-driven outcome
With the right approach, the benefits of Digital Transformation can be achieved by almost any organisation, regardless of industry or size. Ready to deliver value-driven outcomes for your business? Send me an email to request the full Maturity Model adrian.wright@estafet.com. Alternatively, sign up to attend a 30-minute walkthrough, where you’ll get even more business value. Adrian
¹.https://www.estafet.com/post/5-questions-to-ask-that-will-help-boost-agile-product-delivery ².https://info.thoughtworks.com/rs/thoughtworks2/images/agile_maturity_model.pdf