Our previous post, Tackle Security Concerns for Application Modernization, addressed common security concerns and revealed a shift in this perspective. The final post in this series offers tips to secure buy in and make sure the change sticks.
People are the linchpin to your company’s ability to quickly and easily modernize applications.
Achieving success with cloud adoption leans on an investment and commitment to organizational change management. Although most everyone is wired to resist change, helping people understand the reason behind it will establish buy-in for the new platform or process.
Tip #1 – Start Early
Want to minimize the lack of organizational alignment? Start early with change management.
Many organizations perceive cloud transformation as an IT-led initiative. While technology and process shifts might start with IT, the entire organization needs to understand the ripple effect.
For example, Marketing may champion cloud transformation in some enterprises. As customers expect more personalized experiences, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service need new ways to track and analyze customer interactions. More vendors with cloud-based platforms can now provide these in-demand capabilities. And yet, collecting and analyzing customer data brings new requirements for legal, risk, and security teams to rewrite internal and external policies regarding data privacy.
IT is instrumental for supporting and implementing any cloud transformation initiative. However, make sure your leadership shares the vision and commitment to support the change.
Key takeaway: Getting an early start with change management increases the runway for people to be ready, willing, and able to change.
Tip #2 – Retrain Your Thinking
Preparing a cloud transformation roadmap translates to creating a strategic plan for change. As an IT leader, you must retrain your thinking to avoid evaluating cloud solutions based solely on technical characteristics. Broaden your approach to address other questions such as:
- Are your teams ready to adopt modern application frameworks?
- Do they have the right skills and coaching to make that transition?
- Could your current development and deployment processes remain intact without modification?
Account for your development culture
Consider how you can improve your existing build and deployment pipelines. Identifying areas for improvement is as important as evaluating specific platforms.
How can you optimize your development process from idea to production? What steps are no longer necessary or low value? Which steps could be automated to accelerate your delivery? And finally, is your organization ready to make these changes?
Principles from continuous delivery, lean, and agile can be applied as part of your evaluation process.
Key takeaway: Roles must change to adopt new models for application development. How are other companies tackling application modernization? Complete this brief survey to find out.
Propel Your Business with Cloud
Cloud isn’t the goal of digital transformation. However, it accelerates business growth and helps you achieve your transformation goals. A clear vision and roadmap will get you there, but it takes a lot of work. Working with an experienced partner will ensure your cloud journey is a success.
Our team of experts has helped Fortune 1000 companies with application development and end-to-end delivery. Forrester also recognized Perficient among the top service providers in a report from earlier this year – Now Tech: Application Modernization And Migration Services, Q1 2019.
If you’re ready to get started, reach out to our team. Or to learn more about application modernization, download the entire guide below.
