rently operate. This change impacts people, process, and
technology. By far, the people aspect is the most difficult
— and the most impactful. And if you want people to follow
you on this journey, they need to buy into WHY you are
doing it.
I have been “in the cloud” on my own since 2010 and since
2014 had the privilege of observing and helping large
enterprises migrate their workloads and operations to pub-
lic cloud. There are a number of best practices and lessons
learned from those years, but one that stands out is that the
companies that agree on why they are doing cloud succeed
far more often than the ones that do not.
Over the years, we have noticed that companies that con-
ducted cloud adoption workshops before they started their
initiatives were able to openly discuss the hidden issues,
face their fears, understand and agree (even in principle) on
the desired outcomes, and generally get aligned with the
WHY. The consensus and shared vision established during
14 | THE DOPPLER |
SUMMER 2019
these workshops allowed companies to more easily over-
come the various issues they encountered along their cloud
adoption journey.
For example, a common issue is not getting Security and
Governance groups involved early enough. We have seen
those groups get defensive and even adopt a “not our prob-
lem, you should have asked earlier” attitude, which of
course had a negative impact on progress. This was not
because they were not interested in helping, but because
they were put on the spot and told what to do instead of
being included as part of the solution from the start. Pre-
vent the finger-pointing by getting consensus early.
The key benefit of getting consensus and identifying the
WHY is that it makes you think through the problems you
are trying to solve. Cloud, as good as it is, might not be the
right answer for everything.
Let us take a look at the classic people, process and tech-
nology intersections.