Leverage the power of the cloud. Make the delta leap of your cloud programme felt throughout the entire organisation. Find out 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
      1. Key Achievements
      2. The Definition of Cloud
      3. The Rationale for the Cloud Programme
         1. The Motivations and Grande Opportunities
            1. Improving the Status Quo
            2. Leveraging One-Off Opportunities
         2. The Anticipated Outcomes
         3. The Broader Picture
         4. The Business You’re In
      4. Managing the Message
      5. Securing Regulatory Approval
      6. Connecting With Your Peers
      7. Recording Outcomes: The Cloud Manifesto
   7. Starting the Cloud Programme
   8. Iteratively Building the Delivery Pipeline
   9. Iteratively Executing the Delivery Pipeline
4. A Cloudy Future

The Anticipated Outcomes

The organisation’s motivations for adopting the cloud should be well understood at this point in time. This allows to now focus on what the cloud programme is supposed to achieve for the organisation — and then prioritise accordingly.

Note that achievements can differ from the motivations identified previously. For example, a motivation might be to replace error prone manual processes with more robust automated ones.

However, there’s a decent chance that the actual achievement is to reduce costs, improve customer services, and generally move towards a technology-first company. So,

What’s the expected delta leap the cloud programme is supposed to be delivering for the organisation?

Given the far reaching impact of the cloud programme, its contributions are most likely anticipated in several areas; the expected delta leap thus being a combination of outcomes in different areas. For the organisation, the net result might be

• better serving the growing needs of a flexible workforce in areas such as remote working, bring-your-own-device (in short: BYOD), and other factors influencing the work place of the future
• adopting a more agile approach, allowing to quickly respond to shifting demands in the market
• broadening and diversifying the skill sets of the workforce, thereby attracting, hiring, and retaining a more diverse talent pool with transferrable skill sets
• a corporate transformation in order to become a technology-first enterprise

Even though payoffs may be severely delayed or hidden behind step functions, the outcome for the business might be

• overhauling, simplifying, or pivoting the operational model, e.g. by shifting from capital expenditure to operational expenditure
• improving resiliency by taking advantage of the CSPs’ global footprint
• reductions in cost by leveraging economies of scale, commoditisation of resources, or novel cloud solutions
• providing further leverage in upcoming contract negotiations where the cloud might provide a viable alternative
• improving the time to market by leveraging technological advances or a significantly reduced cost of (failed) experimentation
• expanding into new markets previously deemed unviable
• pivoting the entire business as potentially unlocked by adopting the cloud

The outcome of adopting the cloud for legal and compliance might include

• closing gaps in existing solutions
• exiting non-compliant solutions
• the ability to meet new legal or regulatory requirements

Note that while all of the above reduce the exposure of the organisation, the last item also allows to simultaneously unlock new business opportunities.

The net result for technology, traditionally one of the bigger drivers of a cloud adoption, might be

• re-platforming existing solutions
• reducing complexity in existing and new applications or processes
• increasing automation, leading to more robust services, improved productivity, and higher efficiency
• unlocking rapid experimentation by limiting the negative impacts of failed experiments
• accessing solutions or technology not readily available in-house or whose provisioning would otherwise not be economical, such as artificial intelligence (in short: AI), machine learning (in short: ML), Big Data, etc.
• unlocking innovation as a combination of the above

Further areas can and should include cybersecurity, sourcing, audit, and many more.

In general, it is vital to ensure that the short term and the long term objectives — including their implementations — align. For example, when using pragmatism as a rationale, the realistic costs of unwinding implementations in the long run need to be factored in as well.

At this point, it should come as no surprise that a crucial step is to

Define metrics for all anticipated programme outcomes in order to measure success or failure. Document any movements. Use the metrics to measure progress (or the lack thereof).

Again, this is an area where an economic or blurred handling of the truth can (and will — we’ve seen it before) come back to hurt you. A lot.

The Broader Picture

Find out more about it in the next article.

So, How Do You Identify Outcomes?!

While the above Worx for Me!™ when it comes to identifying the anticipated outcomes, 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!