Teams

In the first two parts of this series, I talked about the problem space of mixed operating models in an organisation, why it exists and how to prepare for it. In this post I want to talk about the most important and often most challenging element of operating mixed operating models within an organisation: the cultural change. Any transition of working practices requires a corresponding and iterative process of empathetic change management, where with every modification and iteration, context is given for the changes, conversations are had with those who might be effected and (unlike many corporate change management initiatives) the process includes the input of those on the front-line of the changes. ...

In the first post on Mixed Operating Models I discussed that each application in your landscape, both custom built and third-party will need a different type of operating model and using wardley mapping to map that landscape will give the context of which model is appropriate and at what time. Transitioning between models won’t be easy and requires both technical and cultural changes to be successful. In this post, I will talk about the technical aspects that act as a foundation to any operating model change and cultural shift. ...

This month I wanted to start discussing a topic that has been going around and around in circles of conversation and thoughts for several years now - mixed operating models in IT organisations. There is a lot of ground to cover so stick with me over the next couple of posts and I’ll show you how and why this comes about and what we can do about it. The Problem One of the most challenging aspects of operating IT systems in large enterprise organisations is that there is a complex web of applications, data and infrastructure of varying ages and levels of support. At one end of the spectrum there are homegrown applications supported by agile development teams releasing every two weeks (or more often - wooo!) and then at the other end there are big clunky corporate applications that support all the revenue and all the processes that get the job done day-to-day. One problem I’ve seen in organisations is process and culture that treats both of these applications (and everything in between) the same way. ...

I started writing again in order to get some of those 1:1 conversations and email threads out into the public where some of the conversations, learning and titbits of information can be useful to others. On that same theme I wanted to write down some of those learnings I’ve had building teams over the past 5 years. Grow mentors, coaches and champions This is something I’ve had learn as my teams have grown. When your team is small you are the mentor, the coach and the champion all rolled into one and that’s ok because with less than 10 people you can get away with that. At that scale you can invest in all of those activities with each member of your team; playing different roles at different times. As the team scales however, and as one team becomes multiple teams, you need to find those individuals that will do this on your behalf. Who are those individuals that people automatically look towards and who are those people who verbalise your vision and values when you’re not in the room? These folks you need to grow. I’ve also learnt that not everyone is going to be suitable for all of these positions. Your mentor is not necessarily your coach and your loudest champions might not have the experience or influence (yet!) to be your obvious mentors (although I’ll talk about reverse mentoring more later). ...

I’ve had the opportunity over the past 5 years to be involved in many many different cloud migrations of all shapes, sizes and industries. From large-scale lift and shifts, native refactoring and even one or two cloud-to-cloud migrations. There are couple of things I have learnt along the way that appear to remain true irrespective or size, scope or type of organisation. 1. The cloud provider you choose isn’t the best technical fit but the best cultural fit There used to be a trend when organistations were moving to the cloud to ask the question: which cloud provider do we go with? I still occasionally see this in RFPs for big multi-nationals. This lead to a lot of long conversations, commercial modelling, TCO comparisons and contract negotiations. After all of this work (for which we were handsomely paid) you were still left with a fairly long list of trade-offs that you were buying into and the decision was made based on an executive point-of-view associated with levels of comfort with the various risks on the table. Saying the decision was made based on trade-offs and risk is probably being a little kind. The truth in more often the whole exercise is one of confirmation bias to a decision that has already been made. ...

I suppose that many of you reading this are doing so because the theme of remote working is top of mind and like myself over the past year you’ve found yourself in a deep hole of blog posts and podcasts trying to give you all tips on how to work remotely, how to manage a team remotely and how to do so without burning yourself out and becoming a titrant. ...