Axiologik's presentation at Leeds Digital Festival on how to build sustainable digital transformation in large and complex environments. The techniques here are based on our experience of successfully leading similar transformations in government departments and large private sector clients

1. Techniques For Sustainable Digital
Delivery At Scale
Ben Davison, Axiologik

2. About Me

3. About Axiologik
We Help Organisations Deliver Complex
Digital Change, Particularly In Complicated &
Constrained Environments

4. Digital Is Not Agile Or Cool Tech
http://www.axiologik.com/2019/02/21/achieve-digital-nirvana-
with-the-big-scaled-rigorous-agile-wizardry-framework/

5. Digital Is A Paradigm Shift In How
We Consider Business & Tech
A fundamental re-imagining and re-engineering
of an organisation around customer journeys
Business agility, enabled by technology – i.e. the
ability to sense, interpret, react and outmanoeuvre

6. To Succeed, You Need To Worry
About Three Things
What you’re going to do
How you’re going to do it
How you’re going to get there

7. Book Recommendation: What
You’re Going To Do
Takeaways:
• Prioritisation frameworks are important -
don’t just do stuff
• Research is critical
• Be clear on how you measure success

8. For What You’re Going To Do, The
Answer Is Simple
• Individually deployable components
• Software always in a deployable state
• Single unit flow
• Focus on software operability

9. But As Ever, The Complexity Is In
How You Get There
Tightly coupled legacy architecture
Short term mindset – projects vs products
Change resistant IT operations
Organisational inertia
‘Test everything together, at the end’
‘It won’t work here’

10. Be Wary Of Snake Oil Salespeople
Selling ‘Transformations’
Transforming your tech organization is a painful, complex
journey full of experimentation, success and failure

11. But You Do Need To Have A Strategy
For Getting There
COMMISSION TEAM SET UP
START
WORKING
IMPROVE
FLOW
INCREASINGLY
DECOUPLE
ACCELERATE
But where do you start?
Start small, build momentum, notch up some wins, create
organizational excitement, scale

12. Principle 1: Align To Change Pressure
Teams should align to the where the change is coming
from / needs to go
Both business and technology
Align around shared objectives and KPIs
Misalignment creates friction

13. Principle 2: Minimise Dependencies
Teams should be in control of their own destinies and not
constrained by other teams
‘Platformify’ shared or common components, e.g. infra
Effective use of simulators and contract testing
Manage interface versions – no breaking changes

14. Principle 3: Take A Lean Approach
Understand value streams, instrument the process, relentlessly
focus on reducing cycle time
Map your end-to-end development processes
Use tooling and visualisations to model the flow and identify
bottlenecks / waste
Senior leadership responsibility for and engagement in driving
metrics

15. Principle 4: Focus On Software
Operability
Dedicated time, each and every sprint / cycle, to improve how
the system is deployed, tested, managed, improved
Dev team access to production logs and telemetry
Focus on business metrics, not IT Ops metrics
Continuous feedback and improvement loops (e.g.
exploratory testing)

16. Principle 5: Care About Engineering As A
Discipline
Promote a high-performance engineering culture where
engineers want to learn and improve their products
Engineering self-assessments and coaching support
TechTalks and guilds
Shared ownership of standards tools and processes

17. Principle 6: Start Small, Prove The
Model, Scale
Transformation is all about momentum. Make sure you can
win.
Don’t pick the hardest, most important area first
Have clear, demonstrable success criteria
Communicate, communicate, communicate

18. Principle 7: If It Hurts, Do It More Often
Source: Frequency Reduces
Difficulty – Martin Fowler

19. To Find Out More
• Come and see me afterwards or get in touch:
• Ben Davison - ben.davison@axiologik.com
• www.axiologik.com