The Doppler Quarterly Special Edition 2019 | Page 25

Key Activity 4: Design for effective communications and engagement
With a stakeholder map in hand, you are ready to establish an effective communications
and engagement strategy to move leaders and teams to build sustained commitment to
the new cloud vision. A cloud transformation plan needs to define and track engage-
ment to address key content and timings. The tactical matters, such as engagement
owners, mediums and measuring success metrics, all need definition.
Establish guiding principles to drive the change engagement. For example, the transfor-
mation adopters must own the cloud design, build and run phases. If they don’t, then
you own the risk of building the wrong people, process and technology solution. To fur-
ther help drive commitments, make certain that:
• Success is measured in business outcomes, not just deliverables — business
value must result from the cloud implementation, the sooner the better
• Information flows two ways and is open and honest — a dialogue to provide
feedback is established and acted on
• Roles and responsibilities are clear — when people know what is expected of
them, they can deliver results and respect accountability
Key Activity 5: Understand the re-skilling, education and training implications
One of the cloud’s dirty little secrets, often not discussed, is that the newfound automa-
tion in these hyperscale platforms can render a significant portion of the operational
staff unnecessary. While certain job functions may be automated out of existence, the
people in these functions still have great value to the enterprise. This is where the
importance of re-skilling, education and training come into play.
Such efforts entail a range of formal and informal activities aimed at building cloud
knowledge, skill and experience. You want your training program to construct a bridge
from the traditional operating world to the new cloud centric world. Your people training
dollars demonstrates your company’s commitment to its employees. It also enables the
evolution of valuable competencies and services.
A unified cloud learning plan augments existing in-house expertise and development
capabilities with vendor provided materials. In addition, it creates learning communities
and networks comprised of early adopters.
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