Reactive organizations turn to technology to solve problems, while proactive organizations view it as an accelerator for growth.
In today’s market, change is always coming. Along with advances by peer competitors, start-up companies are frequently leveraging technology to become industry disrupters.
When disruption happens, organizations that have failed to innovate find themselves in a reactive position, scrambling to salvage market share. There are numerous real-world examples from the not-so-distant past – Sears, Toys R’ Us and Blockbuster are among the industry leading corporations wiped out by market disrupters in recent years, largely because they were on the losing end of innovation in the e-commerce space.
As aptly stated by Christopher Condo and Diego Lo Giudice in their playbook, Agile and DevOps Adoption Drives Digital Business Success, leaders who wish to modernize their organizations must follow the law of the disruptive market: “Deliver more value faster than competitors…or risk extinction.”
The ability to deliver more value faster has a lot to do with how organizations view technology. Proactive organizations (disrupters) prevail because they view technology as an accelerator for innovation and discover ways to create added value for customers. Reactive companies fail because they see technology as a solution to problems and delegate the problem solving to their Information Technology (IT) centers although technology does a poor job of asking “What is the real business problem?”
This reluctance to take responsibility for technology ultimately results in a failure to maintain a competitive edge – and while the status quo prevails, reactive organizations will continue to decline in a fast-paced, technology-rich market.
Empowering High Performing Teams to Deliver Innovation
Rather than simply relying on IT for solutions, business leaders must envision technology as an accelerator for business growth and become invested in their organization’s technology decisions. Being invested doesn’t mean just watching or overseeing tool selection and implementation – it involves prioritizing and reprioritizing business goals while empowering people to be innovative.
People are an integral part of a Modern Software Delivery process that is also built upon Agile principles, DevOps engineering practices, and cloud technologies. To empower talented people, proactive organizations must assemble high-performing teams that possess a wide spectrum of business and technology expertise. They include architects, Agile coaches, DevOps engineers, Adoption & Change Management specialists and other experts who can work together in innovative ways.
High performing teams are cross-functional teams that innovate around technology to create added value – they help businesses catch market share when it’s ripe for the catching.
When high performing teams apply Lean Agile principles, they divide their work into smaller, more manageable units.
DevOps helps to identify which processes can be automated to move work through the production chain as rapidly as possible without compromising quality. Cloud technology platforms act as accelerators by providing a functionality that customers aren’t required to build or maintain. When we have these elements in place and working correctly, it creates a pipeline that enables us to create any software we need on a safe and reliable basis while increasing output and velocity.
Final Thoughts
By advocating responsibility for technology, organizations take a proactive approach to becoming more competitive in a disruptive market.
When you apply a Modern Software Delivery strategy that uses technology as an accelerator for growth, you are better able to align your business goals with technology strategies and empower high performing teams to deliver innovation to the marketplace.
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