Digital Transformation Game Plan

Chapter 10. Technology Concepts Every Executive Should Know

This chapter gives a brief summary of the entire technology section of the book—from Chapters 11 to 16. This is the minimum set of concepts that we believe all leaders need to be aware of in order to achieve business outcomes in the Digital Age and beyond.

Technology Excellence Matters

Internal software quality, achieved through technology excellence, is the key to giving a software system a high level of changeability, adaptability, and responsiveness. This will of course have a direct and immediate impact on your organizational responsiveness.

However, in many people’s minds, IT is still treated as a commodity and a cost center. Software systems are often viewed as a utility and compared with water and electricity. You turn on the tap and expect water to come out. If you want to use more water, you open the faucet more or use more taps. All water is the same, so you try to find the cheapest provider. You are not going to change what kind of water you want that often, so the biggest risk of the system is the risk of failure. The system just needs to perform with low defects, high throughput, and high availability.

However, unlike a utility, a software system is often a strategic asset for a business. All software systems are not the same; they are not “one and done,” and they need to constantly evolve and adapt. Your risk is not so much in what a system is doing, it’s more what it is not doing as it tries to keep pace. ...