Staff your cloud programme for success. Ensure that the right solutions get created. Embrace the broader organisation. Here’s how.

This article is part of the limited preview of the “The Missing Cloud Programme Roadmap”, a generic roadmap for any enterprise cloud adoption programme.

1. Executive Summary
2. The Cloud and Enterprises
3. The Missing Cloud Programme Roadmap
   1. The Cloud Programme Roadmap
   2. The First Iteration of The Cloud Programme Roadmap
   3. The Unavoidable Disclaimer
   4. The Roadmap for The Missing Cloud Programme Roadmap
   5. The Manual for the Missing Manual
   6. Building the Business Case
   7. Starting the Cloud Programme
      1. Key Achievements
      2. Setting up the Cloud Programme
      3. Attracting the Right Mind- and Skill Sets
         1. The Cloud Programme
         2. The Broader Organisation
      4. Putting People First
      5. Determining the Build-Out Principles for Cloud
      6. Getting Into the Details
      7. Recording Outcomes: The Cloud Guidebook
   8. Iteratively Building the Delivery Pipeline
   9. Iteratively Executing the Delivery Pipeline
4. A Cloudy Future

Attracting the Right Mind- and Skill Sets

By now, the cloud programme should be a well-sponsored and well-funded grande idea with the potential of catapulting the organisation into the future. However, it still requires motivated and skilled people to deliver that future within the given bounds.

Now, the right set of people creates that exceptional momentum which allows everyone to achieve great things. Building those teams is what this section is all about.

The Cloud Programme

While the organisation almost certainly has a skilled and talented workforce, there’s a decent chance that some areas can and will benefit from outside experience. This is especially true for the cloud programme.

Make a realistic self-assessment of the available skills and bring domain knowledge experts on board who can help shape the details and drive the programme forward.

The cloud programme strongly benefits from a core team that is fully committed to the success of the entire programme, understands the needs and limitations of the organisation, and is at the same time also CSP agnostic. As such,

Build a core team of full time employee hands-on enterprise architects who fundamentally understand distributed computing and enterprise architecture.

Some CSP knowledge is beneficial but, then, people with the right fundamental skill- and mindsets can almost always be trained up in CSPs that are currently en vogue.

The core team can then be augmented with CSP experts who work with the enterprise architects on architecture and eventual build-outs. One of the perils to circumvent is the creation of CSP-sticky and hence, non-transferrable solutions; by design, the enterprise architects should be strongly incentivised to avoid those. In general, any architecture should start with the organisation and then utilise the CSP — not the other way around.

Moreover, future bottlenecks can be avoided by ensuring that knowledge transfers happen between core team members to their mutual benefit. The enterprise architects augment their knowledge with CSP expertise and the CSP experts obtain a better understanding of the requirements and constraints of the organisation.

The Broader Organisation

At the same time of attracting the right external talent to the cloud programme core team, it pays dividend to embrace the existing organisation-wide talent pool. Thus, inviting everyone to shape the journey to the cloud.

There might already be hidden cloud experts or subject matter experts (in short: SMEs) in your workforce!

Given that the cloud programme touches almost every aspect of the technology landscape, some of the cloud programme core team members should and will, in fact, come from the broader organisation.

This is especially true for members of the programme management office. Their deep knowledge of the organisation allows to remove roadblocks but also provide the ever crucial governance.

“Natural historians” of the organisation or employees with a professional interest in the cloud programme can also provide vital input to its success. Even when they are not part of the core team. And especially when they provide disconfirming evidence!

Moreover, those early extended team members allow to develop and establish “cloud advocates” within the organisation, who can provide crucial support for the adoption of cloud in their area. Now or in the future.

Putting People First

Find out more about it in the next article.

So, How Do You Staff the Cloud Programme?!

While the above Worx for Me!™ when it comes to attracting people with the right mind- and skill sets to the cloud programme, you may have an alternative or better way.

Think this is all rubbish, massively overrated, or generally heading into the absolutely wrong direction?! Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and teach me something new!

As always, prove me wrong and I’ll buy you a pint!