Test and learn to transform business and culture
Most importantly, enterprises need to do what successful organizations like Amazon do: instill agile principles whereby you test and learn—constantly.
Again – easier said than done. Everyone understands the need to implement effective change, but few enterprises know how to actually achieve it. Here are a few common pitfalls:
- Starting from scratch, rather than learning from others. There are many published case studies and best practices available.
- Not having a clear, data-driven approach—which harks back to the idea to instill an engineering approach.
- Focusing too much on tools and technology and neglecting the importance of communication, culture and customers.
A framework for engineering transformation
The framework Publicis Sapient helped to develop for one of the UK’s biggest banks is based on lean methods, agile principles and value stream analysis, which maps and visualizes the current state of the workflow to find waste in the system and highlight improvements that can be made. From here, an ‘intervention catalogue’ can flag 52 opportunities for change focusing on four key measures: productivity, people, quality and value. This mapping helps companies better understand their systems and where digital technology can lead to greater value.
Proven results include:
- Twenty to 30 percent reduction in time from backlog to production, resulting in faster speed-to market
- Ten to 20 percent reduction in the effort to make a change in architecture and operating model, resulting in cost savings and faster speed-to-market
- Thirty percent improvement in quality by reducing defects
- Improvement in the people happiness index
Using this approach, many organizations can accurately estimate the expected value at the start of the project and prove the impact of digital transformation on the core business. Successful engineering transformation goes beyond IT; it’s fundamental to a company’s future and its resilience in the changing marketplace.