It's a journey. It's your journey
Pick the right steps, at the right time
Phases
We have a view of what we want to attain, our North Star. It's a way away. We won't get there in one big leap. Like any journey, it's a series of small steps that need planning.
Breaking the journey into phases allows us to deal with the changes needed in the most appropriate order, and aids us bringing people on the journey with us.
The order matters
Your job is to pick the right small pieces, in the right order to build towards the North Star.
Each small step is crucial. Each one takes your company closer to the goal. Each one builds on all of the previous ones. These dependencies are important and must be tackled in the correct order.
There's little point moving to product thinking if you can't reliably deliver a small product increment. The best release pipelines are of little use without a reassuring level of automated tests. An architecture of small, loosely-coupled components is extremely hard to run without a level of operational observability.
Avoid organisational travel sickness
Sometimes you have to do something non-ideal to keep people on-side
As the journey unfolds it will probably be necessary to do a few things that aren't part of the ultimate plan, just to keep the journey going. We call these travel sickness pills.
There are plenty of reasons that this might be needed, for example:
- Earning trust from others
- Delivering something truly business-critical
- Mitigating signs of change fatigue
This is particularly true in the early stages of the journey. At this point there will be little trust that the change can be successfully navigated without too much business disruption.
Also, while starting points vary, it's likely that this undertaking is being attempted because it's perceived that delivery is, currently, not the best it could be. Winning people over to the idea that successful change can be made is crucial. Sometimes that means just doing the things that are needed for now, not for the future.
Carefully selecting the pills needed and the time to take them is a critical component of your journey.
Let's see how this works
Example changes at each stage
Click to see
