Many things have changed since March 2020, and the pace of that change has not slowed. For example, many companies are likely to adopt flexible hybrid home/office working strategies even after the pandemic. One possibility is adopting a “3-2-2 model,” one Harvard Business School professor predicts, with employees working three days from the office and two days from home, followed by two days off.
Behind the scenes, other aspects of how we work have also been changing. Virtualization and accelerated digitalization have led to increased Agility and productivity—gains that may well outlast the pandemic.
Centralized vs. federated IT models
The shift from federated to centralized IT models (and vice versa) tends to proceed cyclically: Federated IT leads to rising costs due to duplication and siloed budgets, which creates a push to centralize IT. Over time, the centralized IT organization begins to be seen as unresponsive to business needs, leading to a drive to (re)federate IT.
As Nancy Casbarro explained in Novarica’s recent Virtual Panel on IT Organizational Transformation, insurers can choose which things to centralize and federalize. Federated teams help align IT with business units and increase responsiveness, but centralized coordination and governance are still required. This ensures teams do not become overly siloed and that enterprise goals do not get lost in the push to achieve the aims of individual business units.
As Mitch Wein pointed out, a responsive structure with centralized governance can also help rein in shadow IT, which can crop up when an overly centralized structure is deemed unresponsive. In the age of low-code and no-code solutions, shadow IT can quickly shift from an opportunity to a risk, underscoring the need for central governance at the heart of a federated IT ecosystem.
Agile product teams
Aligning teams by product (e.g., systems, portal, data warehouse) rather than project provides several technical and organizational benefits and can measurably improve outcomes. But what about products that are needed by multiple teams? This case is where centralized coordination is essential. Product teams need to be empowered to make decentralized decisions, but they need to be aware of the impact of those decisions on other teams and products; likewise, other teams should be aware of what’s going on in that team.
One insurer voiced a concern that product sponsors often have: a team is working on production support and security vulnerabilities rather than on new products and enhancements. Deb Zawisza noted that it is important to educate sponsors on the need for “care and feeding.” Stability, reliability, security, and availability are all important factors that add value. However, when things work properly, that value (and the work that goes into maintaining it) can be overlooked. It may help show sponsors models that can illustrate the cost of allowing technical debt to accumulate, underscoring the value in avoiding that accumulation in the first place.
Taking stock
Agile maturity emerges in stages across various categories and can even vary within a company by area of business. An organization may have teams largely organized by product, but those products may still receive funding on a project basis. IT may be attempting Agile development but be overlayed by a more traditional IT structure. Implementing Agile is an organizational endeavor, not an IT initiative.
The pandemic accelerated digitalization and virtualization, but it also forced disparate teams to coordinate, implement solutions quickly, and improve those solutions as time passed. In effect, the pandemic encouraged the maturation of Agile processes and structures within companies. A year into the pandemic is a good time to take stock of the structures hurriedly built during the first wave. Focus on ways to improve coordination, avoid silos, and ensure the next goals for product teams are as clear as the ones made necessary when the pandemic first broke.
A recording of this webinar can be accessed here. Our next Virtual Panel discussion will be on Tuesday, March 2nd, at 1 pm ET, when we will focus on The Continued Evolution of Marketing Technology. Registration for the event is now open here.
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