Navigating It Transformational Programs: Key Insights For Success

Ligia Costa, Director of IT North America, COBS Bread

The retail industry is witnessing a proliferation of solutions and technological opportunities to unlock business value. Having accomplished the critical step of defining the ideal technical roadmap aligned with the business strategy, the attention must turn to engaging users and fostering an understanding that the transformation extends far beyond a mere IT project. The overarching business stakeholders must support the plan for success.

In my experience leading global scale programs, here are the insights that are instrumental in shaping this journey:

1. Facilitate a Culture of Inquiry

One must avoid assuming that individuals will quickly understand the nuances of the transformation. For that reason, it is paramount to create open and trustful spaces where every stakeholder feels empowered to ask questions. Valuable insights can come from team members, regardless of their role in the company. Organizations can actively encourage dialogue to address concerns, gather feedback, and ensure a shared understanding of the transformation goals. 

By actively listening to local stakeholders and their concerns, it’s possible to reduce the noise ‘We never know what’s going on!’ or ‘Things change so fast.’ Create an open space for discussion and allow people to ask simple questions.

2. Strengthen the IT-Business Partnership

To navigate the accelerating changes of modern technology, fostering deep partnerships between IT and the business is imperative. Transparency, information sharing and close collaboration are pillars of success. The pace and complexity of projects demand a unified approach where key stakeholders are aligned, and expectations are clarified. IT and business leaders must navigate the challenges together to minimize implementation disruptions.

"Embarking on a transformative journey requires embracing collaboration between IT and business and effective communication to explain the upcoming changes"

3. Embrace Flexibility and Compromise

In large-scale transformational programs, the business and IT must be prepared to make concessions. This mindset becomes particularly crucial when embracing an Agile approach of iterating and refining solutions when launching a minimum viable product (MVP). Although the concept of making concessions may pose challenges, the discussions around prioritization are vital to helping us define priorities according to the business value.

4. Navigating Ambiguity and Uncertainty with Resilience

End-users eagerly anticipate solutions, integrations, and other project milestones. It can be frustrating for a team to put so much effort into tasks that take a long time to come to fruition. It’s important to reinforce that scope will be prioritized according to the value delivered to the business, but that you are not losing sight of other essential requests. They will sit on the backlog to be discussed at a future date. Such reminders alleviate stress, manage expectations, and allow the team to navigate the ambiguity of changes.

5. Customer-Centricity: A Guiding Principle

Throughout all transformation journeys, decision-making must consider the perspectives of both internal and external customers. By aligning solutions with customer needs, we expedite value delivery. This customer-centric mindset permeates the complete operations, retail and digital experience revamp, ensuring the focus is on enhancing customer satisfaction.

Embarking on a transformative journey requires embracing collaboration between IT and business and effective communication to explain the upcoming changes. In addition, reinforcing the goals established at the beginning of the program is crucial to deliver with agility and having customer-centricity at the top of everyone’s mind. Process and systems may change rapidly, and resilience to adapt to these changes are also crucial to laying the groundwork for success in an IT transformational program.