 So, next up, we're going to talk about frameworks for technology transformation and to talk us through that we have Karina Clements, who's a consultant with evolution. And she's highly regarded as a consultant with the abacus community abacus being a evolution's leading enterprise architecture solution. She specializes in a range of disciplines. And she's worked closely with leading banking insurance and financial brands helping them to implement and deploy successful business and it strategies using the abacus tool. In this presentation, Karina will help us discover how using the TOGF standard from the open group can enhance your digital transformation strategy. And why architects use transformation to solve problems strategy versus execution and the five key steps for digital transformation in 2021 and beyond so a warm welcome from the open group please for Karina Clements. Thank you for attending today. I will be talking about frameworks for technology transformation. My name is Karina Clements. I'm a consultant at evolution, which has over 19 years of experience leading enterprise architecture all around the world. Starting out today, let's talk about what a standard is. So in our current circumstances, use modeling using past data is no longer straightforward. We can't always use data from past years to predict going forward, especially in the unpredictable times that we live in now. But we still can use existing data and models to react intelligently to scenarios in the future. And standards provide a useful tool for doing so. So one of the standards that is a useful tool for this is the PESL model which allows users to work through strategies and scenarios to see how the broader external environments can impact their enterprise. And so a standard such as PESL can help for providing some of that context, especially when used alongside other standards that allow for quickly modeling the way that the enterprise is currently. So a sense of environment, a sense of the current enterprise can be achieved through standards such as Archimate and Togaff. Now across the board, these standards are used as a toolbox. So there's something that we can tailor and extend. They're a starting point that give us preconfigured assets, methods for shaping roadmaps, metamodels for organizing the architecture, and templates or notations. So they give us a running start to our technology transformation. Now in Togaff specifically, we're able to look at business scenarios, which has three phases for development, which are gather, analyze and discuss with collaboration and review. Now these business scenarios give us an opportunity to also take into account the external factors that a framework such as PESL allows us to methodically analyze. All of this is particularly important as we adjust to the digital economy. So across the board, everything is becoming more and more digital. We see it in all sectors, even healthcare and agriculture. There's this same pattern where we're harnessing technologies to change and to optimize where channels are different. Communication is being altered and just the way that information flows along these systems is completely changing. So digital transformation was an eventuality. Now it's a necessity. And in digital transformation, we're oftentimes stuck between strategy and execution. Senior executives might feel relatively comfortable that their organizations are prepared, but a third of IT personnel believe that those senior executives would be concerned if they had a better understanding of the IT department. And past studies have shown that strategy wins over execution, especially when it comes to having a digital strategy. So execution is key. Both are needed. You certainly need strategy, but it's also important that you understand how to proceed forward in executing that strategy. So that leads us to ask why aren't we ready? Digital transformation has been talked about for a while. So what's holding us back? So there are a few things. First, a lack of commitment, and this can be a lack of commitment from senior leadership or even throughout the company. There might also be a lack of resources dedicated to it and just a lack of technology to enable transformation. So we can be ready by addressing each of these barriers. So we can address our lack of commitment by understanding the vision and making sure that others also understand that vision. We can address the lack of resources by making sure that we have allocation of resources and efficiency throughout. We can address the lack of technology by ensuring that we have the right technology at the right time. So it's not an all or nothing approach, but it's something where we're focused on having just the right tech at the right time as we proceed forward in the execution of technology transformation. So now let's talk about five steps for transformation. Actually, let's talk about five steps for execution because we don't want to just talk about what transformation looks like in nebulous terminology. We want to talk about five action-oriented steps to be able to execute these strategies. So the five steps that we are going to look at today are laid out here, starting with define a vision, then audit your current situation, determine your digital maturity, measure and adjust, then communicate. So first, let's get into defining a vision. Like so many tasks in life, if you and your colleagues understand and agree with the purpose and mission of the task, it's going to be much more enjoyable and the details will flow together. So in order to do this with transformation, you need to ensure that each line of business understands how technical investments and changes map to business strategy. So for this, it's important to seek to understand who is using what and where so that shadow IT isn't lurking and growing in the background. And to successfully manage applications, architects need to know what applications exist, what processes they support and so on. Now, all of this work to sort through some of that identification, that's going to help to reveal who needs to be involved, who is using what and where, and how you'll keep stakeholders informed. So it's not just a question of who has information and who can provide feedback, but it's also a question of how you're going to inform those stakeholders and how you're going to measure success. So defining a vision oftentimes comes down to setting goals that are smart goals, having a clear business strategy and making sure that you're identifying success metrics. Next, you want to assess the current situation. So this means integrating and centralizing company data, which could be informed such as Excel, Visio and SharePoints. And you want to model out the enterprise, model the systems, the applications, the infrastructure, business capability and so on. And this will allow you to identify which critical processes may not be resource-efficiently or what other areas are inadequately addressed for transformation. So this step of analyzing the current situation or assessing the current situation does require data from many different sources, such as Excel, Visio, SharePoint, as well as sources such as Technopedia for Service Now, or additional services which might require an integration built, perhaps using something like a REST API. So Abacus does allow for import from Excel, Visio, SharePoint, Technopedia and Service Now and also does provide a REST API for easy integrations with other tools. And all of that data allows us to then focus on vulnerable areas of the business where we can see based off of the scores that are produced from that data where there's possible failure and what that impact might be. Also just where we're falling short in terms of technology transformation. So what these properties and data that we pull in from lead to is this method for scoring and rating. And that allows us to then plan for the best and prepare for the worst and provide reporting so we can see when we make progress towards digital maturity and technology transformation. So the next step is understanding our digital maturity. Now it is important to understand that digital transformation is a journey involving a complex ecosystem of capabilities. And the digital maturity model can be used in each phase of transformation to help identify where there are gaps, establish key areas to focus on and where to get started. Now here we're going to focus a bit more on the maturity model for technology specifically which you can see falls out into IT support, digital channels, security, analytics and applications. One key part of digital maturity is having access to information and having IT professionals across your enterprise maintaining information and being able to access it. So data owners often need quick access to data such as application lists as we see here. And we don't want to be continually providing manual reports, but we want instead to have a way to provide this data. So in this case this is showing an enterprise catalog which can be embedded in Microsoft Teams or company internets, allowing architects and other users to answer everyday questions like who owns this application. Or who else uses this application as well as provide up to date information. Digital maturity is also going to benefit from the power of no code algorithms and just the power that comes from having algorithms that produce objective data that allow for decision makers to be genuinely informed. So algorithms can also be used to provide predictions and forecasts to estimate key metrics. Some examples of some common ones that we see are business fit and technical fit for applications so we can see how well they are serving our needs. So complexity is also a key one. This is the number of connections to technical elements or business elements. Availability and reliability are also key metrics that are used. And here on the right you can see an example of building out a no code algorithm or what we in abacus call a visual algorithm. And also another visual was just an example of applications mapped with business fit against technical fit and their corresponding suggestions. So having assessed the digital maturity we can then move on to measure and adjust. And this might look something like performing a gap analysis between baseline and a target or comparing two different scenarios as we see here. So by creating these various what if or scenario architectures we can confidently explore a solution space for the future. So in this example this is leveraging the evolve and compare feature that abacus has. Measuring and adjusting also means reporting on those different scenarios using KPIs as we can see here in the sensor prize dashboard. Where we're comparing an on premise ERP deployment to a cloud transformation. And here we can see improvements and maybe some things that we need to compromise on where we have greater availability reduced complexity improved customer experience but perhaps a bit higher response time. So we can see some of the differences there and make an informed decision in that way. And of course we need to communicate throughout and particularly communicate about any changes that should be made. So when communicating there are a few things to keep in mind. One is awareness. So understand who the audience is who the stakeholders are the role they play in the organization and any personal biases they may have. And once you do that you can manage the conversation with a level of situational leadership. So the way this awareness can help you to frame the conversation and continue to lead it throughout. Also make sure that you have the right context. So communication needs to be at the right depth and coverage area based on who the audience is. And story is always important. So you must make the story compelling for what you want to accomplish. You can use your own experiences your own examples in addition to the data that you have to present so that it's really illustrated with some examples that tell a story. And of course keep in mind that you should not only understand your audience's challenges but also empathize with them. If you do this you'll have a better chance of being credible with them and having them want to truly partner with you. So some examples of ways that we might communicate effectively with our stakeholders are going to be presented next. So here we have a Gantt chart which is interactive as you can see here. It allows for timelines and key dates to be tracked. And roadmaps are a constant requirement in any organization. So having this sort of documentation and reporting will be key. Another example is here with process management and capabilities. And there are a few things to keep in mind when presenting and communicating. So one thing to keep in mind as a general principle is to aim for snackable data. You don't want to wait until all the information is available or all of the analysis is perfect because you might be waiting for forever. You need to be able to show the data that you can show the reporting that you can so that you can get feedback but also provide those insights when they're still stallions. You also might want to design concept proofs and prototype reports and dashboards right at the very beginning. So you can start to give people a feel for what they will be seeing and also have something to work towards. Keep in mind also that you can always ask for feedback in an interactive setting and use this process to get to know your stakeholders and understand what they need. So continuing on with some of these examples here we also have an example of resilience reporting. There's a dashboard here that's looking at several different aspects of resilience. So as part of digital transformation of course we would want to enhance that resilience capacity. So let's relate this back to TOGAF, one of the frameworks that can be useful when undertaking an initiative such as this one. So even just taking this first phase we can see the alignment in the first step we identified which is the vision. So utilizing the steps outlined at TOGAF's architecture development model specifically the architecture vision phase can help with the guide the formulation of an organization's digital vision. So embracing the framework allows for some methodology there where we are going to go through those steps of having a vision, gathering information through some of these other steps and then analyzing it to find those gaps. So that framework allows for an excellent starting point especially when paired with other frameworks such as PESL that can help us understand those external factors. Of course you don't need to use TOGAF to use this approach. Other frameworks such as ArchaMade and others are also a great starting point for you to start on the technology transformation journey. So thank you so much for listening. If you'd like some more information please do go to our website evolutionsoftware.com or contact us at abacusatavolutionsoftware.com. Thank you for listening. That's great. Thank you to Karina for sharing your thoughts on that and a great demonstration of how valuable tools can be.