As the pace of technological change accelerates and new business models emerge, companies are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. To thrive in the future, enterprises need to rethink their strategies, structures, architectures and processes. In my upcoming book, “Designing Enterprise for Future” (Title is still to be finalized), I am covering how Enterprise Architecture design principles and frameworks can potentially help design or redesign agile, innovative and customer centric enterprise that is ready for ever evolving future. In this blog post, I’d like to share few excerpts from the book and get some early feedback.
Leading Through Technological Change: Top Questions for Future IT Leaders
Before we understand and explore ways to design an enterprise which can adapt and excel, let’s go through some of the major transformation trends that impacted business landscape over the past few decades.
Age of Internet
Mobile-First Approach
The first-generation iPhone was announced by then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs 2007 and as per publicly available data there were already more than 10 million units sold by 2008. Smartphone industry in general never looked behind. Of-course, we can say firms like Apple and Samsung became some of the leaders in mobile industry space but in my opinion the true transformation was happening in the interfaces that got developed for mobiles during this period. Suddenly websites and apps were developed with Mobile First Approach. We had firms like Uber, Netflix Airbnb and so many other that invested and succeeded by adoption of this Mobile-First User Experience approach.
Let’s Move to Cloud
When AWS, Microsoft and Google announced public cloud offerings in mid to late 2000’s, it was met with lot of skepticism – cost, security, ownership, data privacy etc. Within few years those questions became opportunities such that now governments, banks, hospitals around the world are using one or more public clouds.
How to identify and be prepared for next transformation opportunity?
$1000 question is as a CIO or COO, how do you design an enterprise to be prepared for next big opportunity and also to mitigate internal and external risks that might come as part of major transformation trend?
Some examples of questions IT Leaders need to answer:
How to design a insights-driven organization that leverages data to drive business outcomes?
How can the enterprise design a secure and resilient organization that can manage cybersecurity risks and identify & protect sensitive data?
How can the enterprise foster a culture of innovation, creativity, and continuous improvement, and build a growth mindset throughout the organization?
Enterprise Architecture Frameworks
Let’s see how Enterprise Architecture is important for some of the leadership roles:
CFOs: Enterprise Architecture can help CFOs to optimize costs and maximize value from IT investments.
COOs:As a COO, one of your primary responsibilities is to ensure that the organization operates efficiently and effectively. Enterprise architecture frameworks can help you achieve this goal by providing a holistic view of the organization’s people, processes, and technology.
Let’s talk some EA frameworks
Transformation Frameworks: An exploration of different transformation frameworks, including how they can be used to guide digital transformation initiatives.
Emerging Technologies: An exploration of emerging technologies that are transforming business models, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing.
Workplace of the Future: An exploration of recent trends and changes in the work environment, including how to support remote and distributed teams, foster a culture of communication, and comply with data protection regulations.
Please note: these were just some excerpts (not complete text) from my book and still in draft with idea to share type of topics that will be covered in this book. Just finished with Chapter 2 with lot more to cover. Would appreciate any early feedback based on excerpts shared above 🙂
