To Be Digital on the Outside, You First Need to Be Digital on the Inside
Who can spot the dinosaur programmer?
Rapid feedback cycles (Chapter 36) help digital companies
understand customer demand and improve the product or service offered.
Naturally, this feedback loop works best when the product or service has
direct exposure to the end customer or consumer. Corporate IT, in
contrast, is relatively far removed from the end customer because it
supplies IT services to the business, which in turn is in contact with
the customer. Does this imply that corporate IT shouldn’t be the focal
point for digital transformation as it’s too far removed from digital customers? Many digital transformation initiatives that are
driven “from the top” appear to support this notion: they have special
teams engage with customers in focus groups before handing down the
specs to IT for implementation.
Laying the Foundation
But just like you cannot build a fancy new house on an old, fragile foundation, you cannot be digital on the outside without transforming the IT engine room: IT must deliver those capabilities to the business that are needed to become Agile and to compete in the digital marketplace. If it takes eight weeks to procure a virtual server based on an email request, the business cannot scale up with demand, unless it stockpiles a huge number of idling servers, ...
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