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.
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