The Doppler Quarterly Winter 2018 | Page 81

Planning Your Sustainable Cloud Transformation Initiative Key Activity 1: Keep your executive and sponsorship team actively involved in the cloud creation process Your cloud initiative will fail without sustained executive and sponsorship alignment. The politics, resistance to change and focus on maintaining the sta- tus quo impact leadership and employees alike. The imperative presented with aligning leadership is that they control access to the resources and funding required to design, build and operate your cloud transformation. Funding is ephemeral: key sponsors can change their minds, especially in the rapidly changing technology space where there’s a new fangled distraction invented every day. Here there are no easy solutions. One approach is to achieve consensus early, to continuously challenge the correctness of the cloud vision and to constantly renew consensus as to the transformation’s direction. Too often, big programs try to over-mitigate risk upfront, based on the thinking that a fixed plan leads to fixed outcomes. One lesson learned from the Agile world is you never know all the information up front, so don’t waste energy building a plan that pretends you do. Project name: Company XYZ Change Canvas Urgency Drivers for change. What pain is being felt by the participants. Make sure to express in language the participant can understand and appreciate. Urgency 1 Urgency 2 Urgency 3 Target Conditions Vision The final desired state or working environment after the cloud/change initiative. A range of options may exist at first. Can be narrowed down as the work team learns. Target Condition 1 Success Criteria/Metrics Indicators that the change is pro- ceeding according to initial assumptions. The metrics should be helping to guide the change agents to ensure they are moving in the right directions. Should indi- cate if a pivot is needed or they are progressing towards the out- come. There only needs to be a few metrics. Too many, too expensive. Success Criteria 1 Vision 1 Success Criteria 2 Investments What is required to achieve the minimal viable cloud/change? Constraints around time, cost and effort. Commitment of stakeholder resources. Commitment of physical resources (and incremental $$). Compelling, crisp and con- cise statement that describes the destination of change. That clear objective that res- onates with the participants. Should be bold statement but achievable given the can- vas context. Vision 2 Wins/Benefits Investment 1 The expected benefits to the participants once the cloud/change as a result of the commitment. Expected agility, cost savings and efficiency gains. Should be tangible to participants. Delivered business value. Figure 2: Using a white board and sticky notes to develop this Cloud Change Canvas, teams iterate and brainstorm to maintain and evolve the canvas for the lifespan of the transformation. WINTER 2018 | THE DOPPLER | 79