By David Slight
We'll Talk About Causality and Business Dependency Networks. For a YEAR!
Given our mission to talk about business and technology and learn from diverse perspectives of the group members, we are suggesting and going forth with this self-organizing charter for the coming year. For each of the six BDN perspectives, we will look first at the technology followed by the human perspective. So our calendar for the year looks like the following:
The WHY
November:
Drivers Tech: what is coming for robotics, automation and futurism
December:
Drivers Humans: how to evangelize the humanist and people perspectives
Drivers explain why an investment is being made. These are the reasons that senior managers believe will have an impact on the business in a given time frame, yet they are outside the direct control of the organization. A driver requires responses from the business. Drivers can be external (listed first), something in the larger market environment, or internal, an improvement initiative or mandate generated within the organization by senior management.
January:
Outcomes Tech: What technology and automation do we want to adopt? How far are we willing to let the robots go?
February:
Outcomes Humans: Define the outcomes we as humans want to achieve.
The outcomes define the end point, or the state at which an investment is aimed. They are the agreed-upon achievement targets that help address the drivers. Outcomes are derived from the envisioned changes indicated by the drivers, and help define the benefits that are to be expected.
March:
Benefits Tech: What benefits can automation and technology provide? How do we measure the benefits?
April:
Humans: Benefits: Who should get the benefits? Large tech corporations or everyone? The developer or sales?
Benefits describe what will happen in the business to help achieve the outcomes. These are advantages to an organization’s stakeholders that can be realized by business changes. Every benefit stream must have an owner who is part of the analysis process. The expected benefits types must be determined, along with how they will be measured. The organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) are a good source of measures. Inclusion of quantitative measures is preferred, if a reliable number can be obtained from the customer.
The WHAT
May:
Changes Tech: Where is the tipping point when AI starts to think for itself?
June:
Changes Humans: Can people change, can culture change?
Business changes are new and permanent ways of working within the organization to realize benefits. The changes come in three forms: 1) Doing new things, 2) doing things better, and 3) stopping counterproductive things. These can be shown at a high level in several ways, depending on the organization’s preference: as a business process to be changed, a description of the changes to be made, or as organizational capabilities or functional units.
The HOW
July:
Capabilities Tech: What capabilities can we rely on from technology?
September:
Capabilities Humans: What are the essential human capabilities that should be retained and nurtured?
Capabilities are that must be at the required level of maturity in order to support the desired business changes. Multiple capabilities may be required to change an individual process, and some changes may affect more than one process. Training, implementations of new standards, policies, and procedures, or acquisitions and reorganizations are included in this category.
October:
Enablers Tech: Which technologies are ready for prime time?
November:
Enablers Humans: What can technology still not enable?
Enabling technologies provide the lowest level answers to the question of how business changes will be achieved. The items in this column are the IT systems, projects, or product features that will support needed changes. They can support changes in a business process, as well as the introduction of new technology or the work required in a project .
WRAP UP
December: Discuss our charter for 2019
