1) The document discusses a strategic decision by an IT organization leader and their group to transform from a conventional single-mode operation to a bi-modal IT organization in order to achieve the digital agility needed to meet changing business demands. 2) Bimodal IT involves operating in two separate but coordinated modes - Mode 1 focuses on stability/efficiency while Mode 2 focuses on agility/innovation. This approach aims to address the "digital divide" between what IT provides and what the business requires. 3) A force field analysis is used to evaluate the driving and restraining forces for change. Actions are proposed to increase forces for change and decrease forces against change to help the transition to a bimodal model.

1. EVALUATING A COMPLEX
DECISION
Scaling Up Software
Development

2. CHALLENGE: ACHIEVING DIGITAL
AGILITY WITH BIMODAL IT
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of their individual role, from CIOs and senior IT leaders, business leaders,
technology investors, to professional services.
The digital world is becoming a wild west, where opportunities come and go
quickly, and wining or losing has meaningful consequences and impact for
the business.
As a group leader reporting to the CIO’s org, we are challenged to operate
differently to deal with the greater uncertainty, be more exploratory,
responsive and agile.
We are looking at transforming our conventional single-mode operations to
confront the range of needs presented by digital business and add more
critical capabilities to our organization to achieve the required digital agility
without making mess and with minimum possible disruption.
My group and I are making a strategic decision to becoming bi-modal IT
organization and take the journey.

3. WHY WE CARE TO MAKE THE LEAP
…
Nowadays, the digital world demands greater dexterity in creating
value from technology and the existing traditional workforce
strategies, processes and programs designed to support siloed,
hierarchical organizations are ill-suited to respond to the increasing
uncertainty and challenge of the new-age IT.
Therefore, Bimodal IT is a tool vital to addressing these problems.
Using it, IT adopts two distinct ways to meet enterprise demand:
being agile and flexible, and having a structured approach that
ensures efficiency and predictability.
Bimodal IT is the practice of managing two separate, coherent and
coordinated modes of IT services and delivery, one focuses on
ongoing operations and stability and the other on agility and
innovation.
We strongly believe that by leveraging this approach, we will fill the
digital gap between what IT provides and what the enterprise really

4. MOTIVATION & DRIVER
Digital Divide
Our Current
Capability
Digital
Demand
Forces
Diminishing …
Forces
Increasing …
Increasing pace of business change
Growing shadow IT
Competition filling the void
Growing IT Skills gap
One size fits all operation
Old methods & inflexible architecture
The whole world is
becoming digital, and
sooner or later, every
commercial, industrial
and service sector, public
and private, will be
"digitally re-mastered."
Digital is disruptive for
most industries,
overturning rather than
extending accepted
modes of operation. The
digital divide between
what the IT organization
can provide and what the
enterprise wants and

5. BIMODAL IT IN A NUTSHELL
MODE 1
This is the traditional and sequential approach, emphasizing safety, accuracy. Focused on
running the business, keep the lights on, and deliver new solutions that are well defined.
It favors stability and efficiency over innovation and speed.
Operator culture: satisfying the internal and external customers
MODE 2
This is the exploratory and nonlinear approach, emphasizing agility and speed. Focused
on creating new things, explore uncharted territories, and delivery new solutions where
requirements are uncertain.
It favors agility and speed over standardization and safety.
Innovator culture: exploring the new, and continually pivoting and adapting.

6. THE DECISION MAKING:
STATUS QUO VS. BIMODAL
Where we are Where we want to be
Focus Linear processes Business models
Capabilities IT and Service Management Digital Leadership
Engagement Treat colleagues as
customers, unengaged
with external customers
Treat colleagues as
partners, engaged with
external customers
Outputs and Outcomes Services and solutions,
efficiency and effectiveness
Digital business
innovation, new types of
value

7. THE DECISION MAKING: THE TWO
MODES ARE DEEPLY DIFFERENT
BUT BOTH ESSENTIAL
We must vary our
response to
opportunities by
becoming bimodal.
This entails
operating IT in two
modes that are
comprehensive,
coordinated and
coherent, yet deeply
different — and
exploiting the
benefits of both
approaches.
Mode 1 Mode 2
Goal Reliability Agility
Value Price for performance Revenue, brand,
customer experience
Approach Sequential, high
ceremony
Agile, low ceremony
Governance Well planned, approval-
based
Empirical, continuous,
process driven
Sourcing Enterprise suppliers,
long term deals
Small, new vendors;
short term deals
Talent Good for traditional
projects
Good for new/uncertain
projects
Culture Operator, IT-centric Innovator, business-
centric
Cycle Long (months) Short (weeks)

8. THE DECISION MAKING:
VALUES AND IMPACT
Value to the IT Organization
Creates more front-office value for the business
Improves engagement with the business
Generates credibility and recognition from key stakeholders
Ensures the IT organization's relevance to digital transformation
Value to the Enterprise
Enables rapid digital exploration and innovation, and supports a more
exploratory culture
Improves enterprise agility
Creates a sustained ability to deal with greater uncertainty and risk
Increases digital savvy and improves collaboration

9. THE DECISION MAKING:
FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS
BIMODAL
DRIVING FORCES
STATUS QUO
RESTRAINING
FORCES
• Digital transformation and
competition
• Manage uncertainty and create
agility
• Collaborative and iterative
environment
• Align IT activities with the
dynamics of digital business
• Ability to respond to increasing
customer demands and needs
• Increasing performance standards
• Relaxed and non-transparent
environment
• Steady state and business as usual
activities; hostile to doing things
differently
• Conflicting agendas
• Fear of change and failure; well
learned norms and procedures
• Clear expectations and
requirements upfront

10. THE DECISION MAKING:
FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS
Actions to increase forces for change
• Advocate the importance of time to market and agility, otherwise our organization
will go out of business
• Foster creative space and time to individuals
• Treat the different cultures equally and reward equally, both modes are important
• Align the change to the groups and individuals goals and inspirations
• Increase funds and resources for innovation and operational excellence
• Reduce processes that inhibit innovation; remove bottlenecks and layers of
approvals
• Incorporate lessons learned
• Cultivate innovation, ideas, risk-tolerance, and interests

11. THE DECISION MAKING:
FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS
Actions to decrease forces against change
• Encourage interdepartmental collaboration, mix groups in projects and
initiatives, and engage in team building activities
• Train people on innovation techniques, experimentation, and new efforts
• Celebrate failure by rewarding teams for failures from which critical lessons
were extracted or different procedures were applied
• Increase communication and inclusion across the employee base
• Increase rapid prototyping and experimentation skills, build with
incomplete requirements

12. THE DECISION MAKING:
ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS
Bimodal is a way of operation and conducting business in the digital age, the
organization environment and culture need to be poised for the change and
embrace it faithfully. While timing is critical, the organization goal is to become
fully agile and ahead of the curve in the digitalization by year 2017, as such we
don’t believe time and deadlines will impost any constraints when making the
decision to move to Bimodal. Nonetheless, we have to be conscious and be able
to work under pressure to gather data and constantly evaluate the situation.
Additionally, the organization has the necessary human capital, financial
resources, procedures and reward system that will enable the decision making
process, acquiring and analyzing necessary information, and influence good and
high quality decision outcomes.
However, When assessing our organization and its characteristics, we are coming
across some opportunities and challenges that we need to be aware of and
manage throughout the decision making process. These are primarily:
• Organizational Structure
• Specialization

13. THE DECISION MAKING:
ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS
Organizational Structure
As most corporations, our organization is highly hierarchical with different levels of
management, power or authority which limits information flow and productivity by
introducing layers of management. We will need to reach out to the leaders in the
organization and guarantee agility and promote employee involvement throughout the
decision making process so that information, and feedback can reach all employee quickly
and outcomes become more directly accessible by the entire organization.
Specialization
It is vital that team members and departments step out of the silos and start collaboration
and working together to achieve the digital transition and succeed in Bimodal. We believe
there are some degree of isolation at our organization that will inhibit the organizational
agility and Bimodal efforts. Let alone the geographically dispersed teams and expert
leaders who are involved in the technology transformation and who we need to strive to
engage in effective and efficient decision making process and information.
Extra planning and communication need to take place to ensure all information are
uncovered and expertise brought into the decision making process.

14. THE DECISION MAKING:
VROOM-YETTON DECISION TREE
In our case, the top three main outcomes that will aid shaping the
decision making process are quality, staff commitment and growth.
Decision Point Question Y/N
QR Quality Requirement How important is the quality of the decision? Yes
CR Commitment
Requirement
How important is employee commitment to this decision? Yes
LI Leaders Information Do you have sufficient information to make a high-quality decision? Yes
ST Problem Structure Is the problem clearly structured? Yes
CP Commitment
Probability
If you were to make the decision by yourself, is it reasonably certain that
your managers would be committed to it?
Yes
GC Goal Congruence Do your managers share the organizational goals to be attained in making
a good decision?
Yes
SC Subordinate Conflict Is conflict among your managers over preferred solutions likely? No
SI Sufficient
Information
Do your managers have sufficient information to make a high-quality
decision for themselves?
Yes

15. THE DECISION MAKING:
DECISION MAKING METHOD BY
VROOM-YETTON
Decision Making Method
AI
You have considered the issue and have decided to reach a decision on your own, considering any
information you have readily available.
AII
You have considered the issue and decided to reach a decision by yourself but you realize you don't have all
the information you need. Therefore, you seek data from other sources but you don't feel it is necessary to
consult with anyone else or ask for their advice.
CI
You have considered the decision and decided that it would be helpful to solicit advice from members of
your management team. You consult with one or more of your managers but do not ask for their help in
making the final decision, which is yours alone.
CII
You have considered the decision and decided that it would be helpful to hear what members of your
management team have to say about the situation. You would like them to have the benefit of hearing all
perspectives, so you decide to hold a meeting to discuss the problem. You make the decision independently,
based on your own judgment from what you have heard.
GII
You have given thought to the decision and decided to hold a meeting of your management team so that all
perspectives and opinions can be considered. You coordinate the meeting and facilitate the discussion,
hoping to bring the group to consensus regarding the best possible decision. You make a special effort to
In my situation with Bimodal, I can use any decision process equally well, I personally will use CII to
use the meeting as a vehicle to spread out the information in the organization and promote direct
employee involvement.

16. THE DECISION MAKING:
BIMODAL HIGH LEVEL DECISION
TREE
Should we respond to
digitalization
Scale up operations to deal
with greater uncertainty and
win more/new opportunities
Go Bimodal
Create Separate Coherent
Modes: Mode 1 & Mode 2
Build New Critical
Capabilities, Embed in
Culture, Tap into uncharted
territories and Innovate
Tweak Mode 1 to Support
Innovation and Digitalization
Challenging Uni-mode with
discrete goals, values,
governance, cultures and
cycles.
Grow traditional ongoing
operations
Uni-mode, one-size-fits-all,
limited growth, lost
opportunities, unable to
remain competitive and
relevant in the digital era
Do nothing, running the risk
of going out of business in
less than 5 years
Digital void can also be filled externally, by a competitor or new entrant into the market
Bimodal is not “nice to have”!
Moderate Cost / Low ROI
High Cost / Moderate ROI
Moderate Cost / High ROI