This page describes aspects of the Iterative Transformation Model itself. Introducing the purpose for its creation, its target consumers, and values which the model provides. In other words, it offers basic background information about the Iterative Transformation Model. Doing so, leaves the Model pages free to focus on relevant content for each section of the ITM.
After reviewing these aspects of the ITM, take a look at how the model can help:
Purpose
Change is hard. In truth, change is disruptive, costly, and too often ends in failure. Transformation, which is change at scale, is even more risky, and always a challenge. Of course, the scale of change required to implement any ERP, CRM, SCM or PLM solution is large. Undoubtedly, a decision to tackle an enterprise-level initiative is also an implicit decision to undertake a transformative change.
Typically, such change involves participants from Business, IT and often 3rd Party Vendors. To be successful, these initiatives must look at: processes; roles and responsibilities; applications and technologies; and data. Further, such initiatives involve planning, design, delivery, testing and more. Consequently, for any organization dealing with a single Solution, that's a lot of moving parts. When multiple Solutions are in the mix, change can be exponentially more complex.
Alignment
Indeed, a major impediment to the success of such initiatives is aligning all of the participants in working towards consistent objectives. In other words, to get everyone - from Sponsors to Developers - on the same page and rowing in the same direction.
The first thing to understand about the Iterative Transformation Model is that it provides that alignment. From the executive level down, the model defines many, interrelated objectives. It also identifies many artifacts and their relationships with one another. Further, it describes strategic, long-term, medium-term and short-term efforts such that each contributes desired increments of change. All of the above drive toward an overall, successful Transformation.
Consistency
A second major impediment is Agile's flexibility. Some flexibility is good; too much is detrimental. For instance, organizations and individuals often apply Agile concepts to myriad situations. Frequently, this leads to many different interpretations of how things could, or should, work. For example, how things were done in another project, or another organization, often interfere with how things should be done on this project, in this organization. As a result, the understanding of roles, work and artifacts are open to interpretation. Even basic terminology can be inconsistent.
The next thing to understand about the Iterative Transformation Model is that it also provides consistency within and across Solutions. It defines processes and artifacts to implement change successfully across a variety of initiatives. Clarifying communications, activities and responsibilities goes a long way towards improving the probability of success.
KEY POINT: The majority of enterprise-level intitiatives which fail do so because alignment and consistency are lacking. Correct these problems and the probability of success increases dramatically.
Objective
The objective of the ITM is to ensure the success of enterprise solutions. Not just their delivery, but also their ongoing use. That is, to provide more benefit for less cost. In other words, to maximize the ROI for any such initiatives. To achieve this, the model focuses on improving effectiveness and efficiency, as well as the overall probability of success.
Effectiveness improves by guiding consumers towards tasks that work, and away from those which do not. Efficiency improves by accelerating consumers knowledge of processes, tools and artifacts. Both aspects derive from years of experience.
Thus, Consumers can avoid reinventing wheels which already exist. Similarly, they can also avoid mistakes others have already made. Moreover, participants may undertake their journey with a guide to show the better paths. While learning about the Iterative Transformation Model, understand that each component's design seeks to improve the probability of successful implementation. After all, nothing kills ROI more than investing in a Solution which is never used.
Productivity
Encompassing all levels of the organization, the ITM drives alignment and consistency both vertically and horizontally. Vertically means from executives to analysts. Horizontally means across Teams, and from one Solution to another. Together, each improves productivity. In general, ITM objectives seek to:
- Save Time - There's no need to take months or years figuring out how to apply a proper iterative approach to an initiative. Instead, start with this model. Then adapt it to suit any specific project or organization. Results will appear faster, and participants can adapt 'lessons learned' sooner.
- Reduce Cost - In addition to money saved due to the time savings. The ITM also prescribes work that is required in order to achieve successful delivery. In other words, doing the right things, in the right order, mitigates missed objectives. Further, they reduce unmet expectations and avoid costly rework.
- Increase Value - Each Solution intends to provide value to the organization. By doing the right things, and doing those things right, Consumers can realize better benefits more quickly.
Comparative Value
Comparatively, consider initiatives which do not begin with a well-defined, iterative approach tailored to COTS or XaaS Solutions. For example, initiatives which do not have a proven sequence of work and deliverables. Likewise, any project that is figuring it out as they go. Neither example will be productive for quite some time, if at all.
In contrast, simply adopting the ITM will save months of time. Moreover, it will save most large companies millions of dollars over any single Solution. Adopting the ITM will simplify and clarify participant communications. It will do the same for expectations, roles, responsibilities and understanding. Saving either time or money increases a Solution's ROI. Saving both offers a significant increase. If the only thing one understands about the Iterative Transformation Model is that it improves productivity, that is enough.
ITM Value Drivers
To emphasize, the ITM builds Consumer value around three core drivers.
Alignment
To begin, getting all participants moving in the right direction and on the path to achieving agreed upon objectives is an ongoing challenge.
The ITM helps to ensure the alignment of:
- Customer needs with Solution capabilities;
- Executive or Sponsor objectives with Solution increments;
- Individual Solutions with overall Enterprise Strategy & IT Architecture;
- Resources with the Tasks to do; and
- All work such that cart never precedes horse.
Consistency
Secondly, like the analogy of several people each touching a different part of an elephant and trying to describe the whole, many participants familiar with iterative delivery can describe only a portion of the "Big Picture".
However, unlike the elephant, individuals and groups can "do their own thing" for too long before recognizing that our "thing" doesn't actually fit with their "thing", and doesn't support management's "thing". In other words, that everyone needs to be working towards a single "thing" which is larger than any can see or describe on their own.
The ITM provides the means for getting everyone on the same page. It provides the language, tasks and artifacts that allow each group to deal with their own "thing". Moreover, they can do so with confidence in knowing that their efforts are contributing to a single, greater whole.
Productivity
Most importantly, learning any new approach takes some time. The ability to see what works, what does not, and to adopt improvements quickly, is a big part of the value an iterative approach enables. The ITM provides a head start by defining a thorough, viable approach. Further, it offers the means by which to adapt the model to suit individual organizations.
The ITM already includes many lessons learned from prior initiatives across many organizations. Furthermore, it prescribes actions and artifacts that are effective, and avoids those which are not. In truth, the model is more comprehensive and thorough than what many companies have managed to develop in-house.
Accordingly, apply the ITM to enable internal and/or external resources to become more productive, in less time, and for lower cost.
Model Background
By and large, the ITM is the result of tens of thousands of hours implementing enterprise solutions. In essence, it seeks to retain what works, and avoid what does not.
What the ITM Is
Of course, Agile has many variations. Specifically, the ITM is merely one variant - a coherent, complete and viable model whose design allows participants to apply an iterative approach to enterprise-scale Solutions. Within the ITM, Consumers will find references to other models and frameworks such as:
The ITM doesn't challenge or re-create any of these. Rather, it seeks to apply knowledge from these domains in an actionable, holistic form.
Above all, the ITM aligns People, Process, Technology and Data (Information) to achieve Transformational Solutions to complex problems.
In looking at the drivers of all Best Practices, they boil down to five (5) key principles:
- Simplify;
- Standardize;
- Automate;
- Consolidate;Â and
- Strategic Alignment.
In general, the ITM applies these principles to the iterative delivery of enterprise Solutions.
What the ITM Is Not
The ITM is not all things IT. First, it has a specific focus. In short, its focus is upon the identification, definition, design and delivery of Solutions which support Business objectives. In this respect, its design seeks to help IT and its partners deliver better value to their Customers.
Second, the model does not argue whether or not COTS or XaaS are appropriate for a specific Solution. Similarly, it does not judge whether or not an iterative approach is appropriate for an initiative. Rather, those decisions belong to the organizations undertaking such initiatives.
Third, the model also does not try to explain basic concepts such as Features or Stories, Releases or Sprints. A quick Internet search can provide such basic information. In short, the model assumes some level of knowledge and understanding on the part of consumers. Alternatively, it expects they are capable of looking up subjects with which they may be unfamiliar.
However, understand that externally searched information may differ from the model. This is because such information is often provided without context of a larger model. As a result, such information may be correct in its own right, and yet be inconsistent with the ITM. Any external content may need some translation. Fortunately, much of that translation is already built into the model.
Why Create the ITM?
In short, the model seeks to address the frustration and dissappointment that too often plagues enterprise-level implementations.  It is worse than a shame that so many companies spend so much time and money for little or no return. Too often, organizations should consider what transpires as negligence, or fraud.
Enterprise implementations are not (quite) rocket-science. But they are very large, very complex, and easily mishandled. As a result, many challenges and failures come down to not having enough people with proper knowledge in the right roles. For that reason, this model compresses years of experience, across multiple roles, into a coherent approach.
Some major reasons for the ITM's creation include the desire to:
- Provide a top-to-bottom alignment of resources and objectives;
- Seek the best ideas on specific topics, and meld them together into productive, rational actions;
- Speed the realization of value and prevent its unnecessary delay;
- Prevent situations where companies spend $10s of millions without seeing commensurate results and comparable value;
- Eliminate cases of too many cooks in the kitchen, where multiple, conflicting "we should do it this way" approaches create unnecessary problems; and
- Enable organizations save serious amounts of time and money!!
When to Use the ITM?
Though earlier versions focused on large-scale package Solutions, more recent versions of the model can address many Solution delivery needs.
At this time, the ITM will improve delivery of:
- Digital, Business or IT Transformations;
- COTS, SaaS, PaaS or IaaS Solutions;
- Cloud, Hosted and/or On-prem Solutions;
- Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) Solutions;
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solutions;
- Supply Chain Management (SCM) Solutions;
- Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Solutions;
- Best-of-Breed, Tier I or Tier II Applications;
- Business Intelligence, AI, Machine Learning, Messaging or Storage Solutions,
- In-house staff, 3rd Party Vendors and/or System Integrators, particularly if there are multiple delivery models, each trying their own approach;
- Products, Systems and Services.
Who is the ITM's Audience?
Another thing to understand about the Iterative Transformation Model is that it serves a variety of Consumers. The most important segments include those who can influence the means of delivery within a project, program or enterprise, including:
- Executives and Sponsors who want to see their initiatives succeed in a timely and cost-effective manner;
- Enterprise Architects who are looking for a means to better orchestrate solutions and align them to enterprise strategy and enterprise architecture;
- Solution Architects who are seeking a holistic approach to single- or multi-Solution initiatives, and/or who are trying to align multiple, inconsistent or incomplete approaches into a more thorough and coherent approach;
- Program / Project Managers responsible for delivering a packaged Solution using an iterative approach.
- Application Vendors or Solution Integrators who implement enterprise applications.
The ITM is a better alternative to allowing individual programs, projects, systems and teams each define their own way of doing things. Incompatible approaches lead to excess overhead. They also produce delayed results and higher costs.
Another group who may have an interest in learning about the Iterative Transformation Model includes anyone responsible for overall applications or delivery within an organization. The model provides an alternative to establishing an in-house Center of Excellence (CoE) and/or paying staff to figure out how to make enterprise solution delivery more productive or successful.
Model Context
Certainly, the ITM can provide value in many areas. That said, it is important to understand a few things the model cannot address.
A few words about CoTS & XaaS
Off-the-Shelf applications and cloud-based services can provide much sought after alignment. The rule here is 'don't fight their architecture'. That is, do not try to re-engineer a COTS or XaaS Product, System or Service to do something it was not designed to do. Work with it, not against it.
Of course, that does not preclude valid efforts to tailor or extend functionality to suit individual Customer needs. However, it does imply that the less delivered functionality is used, the lower the return on investment becomes.
Another facet to consider is that these Solutions also provide internal consistency which reaches into various parts of the organization. For example, Finance, Procurement and Manufacturing each cannot do their own thing in an ERP Solution. While learning about the Iterative Transformation Model, it will become clear that decisions made in one area affect, or constrain, options elsewhere.
Many Pieces to an Enterprise-scale Puzzle
In other words, groups are not free to focus solely upon their needs. They must consider how others plan to use the same Solution. Not doing so is analogous to working with individual pieces that are not part of the same, end-state puzzle. Each team may build a small portion. However, in the end they pieces will not fit together as desired.
These are two of many reasons why it is important to complete Solution Strategy & Architecture and Business Process Definitions before any iterative work gets underway. A well understood future-state, or end-state, is an absolute necessity when applying an iterative approach to Solution Delivery.
Without these as a compass, the initiative will drift further and further away from its objectives. People will look busy, and many will actually be busy, but over time the results of their efforts less and less support the initiative's original objectives.
A few words about Agile
Some may point out there are many other sources which address the ITMs topics. Certainly, there are books, articles, blogs and other materials on many aspects of enterprise-level implementations. Similarly, there are many sources which discuss Agile, and/or iterative approaches. Some of these materials are excellent.
Unfortunately, most do not align well. Even worse, they are often inconsistent, even incompatible with one another. Each deals with its subject matter, but leaves the reader to place that single puzzle piece into their own, broader picture. For instance, the description of an Epic in one article is actually a Feature in another. Likewise, a Feature in this person's definition is a Story in that person's.
Moreover, many examples of how to create Stories, and apply Agile, are based on custom software development, not package implementation. In truth, those articles are not wrong. Rather, they merely reflect the nature of Agile. That is, to be flexible and adaptable to ones needs.
Based on Agile Principles
One of the things about the Iterative Transformation Model is that it generally avoids the term "Agile". For example, there are no references to a manifesto. Similarly, developers are not the center of the universe. Unlike Agile's software development examples, the ITM's design is specific to package-based Solutions. For example, Agile tends to assume a start with a small footprint and to then radiate new features adjacent to existing functionality. Package implementations begin with an already large footprint. Further, organizations may add new functionality in myriad areas, often with impacts to related systems. That said, the model does apply an iterative approach. So, where possible it seeks to use terms, concepts and principles consistent with "Agile".
Furthermore, the ITM does not seek to re-invent Agile. Nor does it explain its concepts and best practices. Moreover, the model does not justify the topics included such as Planning, Implementation and Testing. Rather, it assumes Consumers understand the need for such activities. In short, the ITM merely provides one way, or a strict variety of ways, by which to apply an iterative approach to achieve specific goals.
A Few Cautions about Coaches and 'Gurus'*
Beware of Agile Coaches and 'gurus'. On one hand, they may know their material. On the other, that doesn't mean they know how to apply it to packaged applications, technologies or services. Similarly, it does not mean they understand when - and when not - to apply their toolkit to transformation initiatives, which every large-scale implementation undoubtedly is.
*Guru - because 'Charlatan' is too hard to spell!
For instance, much of Agile focuses on software development. Implementing a COTS or XaaS Solution is not software development, even if it involves customizations and extensions. Participants must apply an appropriate model in order for it to provide the benefits desired of an iterative approach. Do not allow an enterprise initiative to be driven from the bottom up. In other words, do not allow Stories and Sprints to drive delivery. Also, do not apply a software development approach to package applications and technologies. Each of these is a recipe for disaster.
Also, beware of those who advocate short-cuts. For instance, being "Agile" does not mean there is no need for documentation. Similarly, it does not mean that Teams are free to plan Sprints or pick and choose their work without consideration to broader Release and Solution objectives. Importantly, it does not mean that delivery can begin without first establishing future-state goals. While Agile tends to encourage biting off small pieces at a time, for packaged applications there is always a "bigger picture". Allow short-cuts and participants will miss the Big Picture.
To learn more about the ITM, begin with the section on How to Organize for Iterative Transformation.