ILLUMINATION Book Chapters
Digital Intelligence — Chapter 22
Conclusions And Takeaways
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6a, Chapter 6b, Chapter 7a, Chapter 7b, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22
Congratulations!
You reached the final chapter after discovering many facets of digital intelligence.
Now, let’s take a high-level review of what we learned to reinforce our learning and comprehension. Let’s have a quick recap of the key points we discussed earlier.
We covered that the standard definition of intelligence is acquiring knowledge and skills and applying them as needed. Digital intelligence is the ability to convert or represent the physical world in digital format.
Physical and digital are two different worlds with distinct entities. They have their inherent capabilities and limitations.
To be digitally intelligent, we need to have in-depth knowledge of the digital process and acquire practical skills relevant to the digital disciplines.
Architectural thinking can be used as a vigorous framework to gain digital knowledge, unfold the mystery of digital intelligence, and increase our digital intelligence by providing a structured approach.
Vision sets the scene and shows the team where they want to be in the future. We all have a vision. A productive vision is a leadership capability. It requires substantial intelligence, knowledge, skills, and experience.
A digital strategy helps the team reach its destination. They need a master plan. Their master plan can be a high-level roadmap to take them to the goal they set.
Both users and systems have their requirements. There may be different requirements for various kinds of users. Requirements gathering for digital endeavors are an end-to-end process including activities such as collecting, analyzing, clarifying, tracking, validating, and using.
Use cases require different thinking modes; for example, looking at things from the user’s perspective. We can observe and become an observer at the same time. This is considered a critical mental capability.
By understanding the current state, we set a future state and develop a roadmap to reach the target goals. Architectural thinking can guide us to think about the feasibility of our digital solution roadmap by looking at the risks, dependencies, and constraints along the way.
A trade-off can be a compromise between two options. When making trade-offs, we can consider critical factors, such as cost, quality, functionality, usability, and other non-functional points.
We need to make architectural decisions carefully. Each decision can have a substantial impact and multiple implications. For example, some implications can be cost-related, while others can relate to performance, availability, security, and scalability.
Setting the context for any solution helps us communicate it to relevant stakeholders in an efficient manner. In addition, context adds clarity to understanding the answer.
A model is the proposed structure. It is typically on a smaller scale than its original. Describing abstract representations in concrete details may require excessive mental exercise. These exercises may include dealing with multiple patterns, They can stimulate our thinking abilities.
Dealing with complexity requires extensive intelligence. The most common technique is simplifying complexity by using a partitioning approach. We can divide, subdivide, segregate, or apportion the systems, objects, components, or teams into smaller units.
An effective way of simplifying a system is by reducing the number of repetitive constituents. Another technique could be moving an item from a large group of the clustered items but still, keeping the relationship to preserve its core identity. After partitioning and simplifying, the following helpful method is iterating.
Everything in enterprise transformation generates substantial costs. There are known and unknown costs. Hidden costs can be seen as a significant part of the iceberg.
We can contribute to reducing the solution costs by making trade-offs with a systematic and collaborative approach.
We increase the quality of the solutions by applying professional diligence, architectural rigor, delivery agility, innovative collaboration across multiple teams, and harvesting re-usable materials.
Beware that there may be tremendous pressure from project managers and procurement staff to generate an upfront Bill of Materials due to the project life’s demands. However, we can point out that we cannot commence purchasing materials without an approved architecture and design.
There can be extensive infrastructure and maintenance costs associated with large data centers, server farms, mobile devices, storage units, data processing tools, analytics machines, and hosting in multi-Clouds.
Automated SLAs can detect low availability and poor performance. These automated SLAs trigger the rules and force the organizations breaching the agreements to pay the contractually agreed penalties.
We need to pay attention to the SLAs from the nascent stages of the digital solution life cycle.
The higher the quality of the solutions, the easier it is for SLAs to meet expectations when the solutions are in production and the operational state. The rigor for quality in each phase can positively contribute to dealing with SLA risks.
Some of the key considerations to address SLA issues could be autonomous condition monitoring and remote maintenance.
Digital transformations are long journeys moving the enterprises from chaos to coherence. The transformation process includes every aspect of the enterprise.
Enterprise digital systems can consist of business IT processes, business data, business applications, IT infrastructure, and IT service delivery. These domains can even be more complicated with geographical factors, such as adding multiple countries to the equation.
One of the essential workaround solutions for dealing with this complexity is modernizing these primary domains iteratively in parallel.
The strategy document is a critical artifact to bring all parties and stakeholders on the same page. Then the digital solution leaders identify the essential dependencies among these domains based on the short-term, midterm, and long-term considerations.
A viability assessment must include key risks, constraints, and dependencies. The viability assessment can be the most informative tool a digital solution lead can provide to the sponsoring executives to make informed decisions.
As the digital solution leads, we need to develop criteria to prioritize the requirements based on factors depicted in the strategy and roadmap documents and the financial and business priorities set by the sponsoring executives.
We need to introduce innovation continuously as a cost reduction enabler, as it can be the dominant player for overall cost management in complex digital environments.
Innovation and invention can relate to concepts such as novelty, improvement, iterations, and ongoing steady progress. On the other hand, innovative and inventive thinking generates novel ideas, focuses on improving ideas, and strives for making continuous iterative progress.
Enterprise cultures containing innovative and inventive thinking approaches can naturally renew themselves. They can survive and thrive in fluctuating conditions. This situation is typical in modernizing and transforming enterprises.
Innovation, inventions, technical excellence, and agility are interrelated. Innovative and inventive thinking ignites technical merit, and technical excellence can be empowered by agility.
We use vertical and linear types of thinking for problem-solving. Applying logic and streamlining thoughts are some techniques in this type of thinking mode.
Horizontal thinking covering more breadth rather than depth aims to generate unpredictable ideas by breaking out of rigid thought patterns. On the other hand, horizontal thinking challenges assumptions. This kind of thinking looks for alternatives and goes beyond the ordinary, creating radical solutions.
There are several techniques for horizontal thinking. The common ones are randomizations, distortions, reversals, exaggerations, metaphors, analogies, dreaming, theme mining, questioning the norms, and creating contradictions.
One of the practical techniques to generate innovative and inventive ideas is to use mind mapping. We can articulate our thoughts using representative maps on paper or a whiteboard.
People collaborate better in cultures embracing innovative and inventive ideas. These people see themselves with the changing conditions in new positions. They do not resist as they know that change can be helpful for them.
An effective way to ignite innovation and invention is to be a role model for our followers. Therefore, we need to encourage the team members to innovate, invent and reward them for their achievements.
In modernizing organizations, innovation and invention become habitual. Team members strive for excellence by creating new ideas in their day-to-day tasks.
We need to develop innovations and designs at a personal level and collaborate with the immediate teams and extended teams.
Design thinking allows the team members to be intuitive and logical at the same time. In addition, design thinking enables team members to be more creative to recognise new patterns.
We need to have a growth mindset to ignite innovation and invention in the ecosystem. Therefore, we must help our team members with a fixed mindset to convert to a growth mindset.
We must be customer-centric and put ourselves in customers’ shoes with strong empathy. Using design thinking techniques, we can develop empathy maps. The mindset based on empathy is part of the design thinking practice.
We need to consider market conditions and the needs of clients. These conditions can help us generate new ideas. Listening to our clients carefully and collaborating with them can help us focus on innovative thinking. Many innovations can be co-created with clients.
There can be visible and invisible roadblocks to innovation. Therefore, it is critical to recognize potential roadblocks.
The roadblocks can be in various forms. We can also see them from multiple angles. One of the main roadblocks is people keeping the status quo in business ventures.
There is always an unknown fear and resistance towards novelties by some people who may have hidden agendas. We must recognize those people who may try to sabotage innovative and inventive thinking in modernization programs.
We must find ways to engage resisting people and show the value and benefit of new ideas to these types of people. The business-as-usual mentality can be a roadblock to new ideas.
Cumbersome business processes can be deterrent factors. More importantly, tired employees can hardly be interested in innovation and inventions as they cannot see the immediate need.
Simplicity touches almost every angle of modernization solutions, as these solutions can be incredibly complex. However, simplicity is a paradoxical topic in sophisticated enterprises. To create simplicity, we need to deal with substantial complexity, complications, and worldly matters.
Digitally intelligent leaders are expected to articulate the most complicated and complex matters in a simple, understandable format.
One of the effective ways to this simplification is automating routine tasks and repetitive technology stacks. Automation can help standardize and simplify convoluted and repetitive tasks prone to human errors.
We need to have a mission to simplify the business and technology processes and make them user-centric.
The sophisticated services model in the back office requires substantial amounts of simplification for users to take benefit from using complicated technologies.
Simplicity and clarity are closely related. Especially in the technical services industry, providing a transparent experience to the technical team members can be very beneficial.
Design simplicity has a tremendous impact on the subsequent phases of the modernization lifecycle, such as service delivery and support. The simpler the design, the more influential the delivery and service support can be.
Mobile designs must focus on simplicity by removing clutter from screens due to small screen views. In addition, these types of designs must focus on only fundamentally essential objects.
Modularity and modular approaches to complex solutions are essential for simplification, modernization, and digital transformation. One of the approaches for the modernization goals can be a domain-based walkthrough of simplifying modules of IT infrastructure, applications, architecture, middleware, security, network, and data domains.
Convoluted specifications also require simplification. For many years, time and energy spent on the system and user specifications of software and hardware products and services were substantial.
User stories are simple templates, including the functionalities, capabilities, and specifications from the users' or consumers' point of view.
The simplification process for communication enables the understanding of issues, risks, and dependencies effectively.
Refraining from convoluted phrases and using precise language and explicit statements can be valuable in simplifying communication.
While we can use advanced business terms for senior executives to articulate a point, we need to use deep technical terms to talk with engineers or technical specialists. This awareness, customization, and flexibility in communication are crucial characteristics of digital leaders.
The attention span of our generation is relatively low due to many technical disruptions in our lives. To this end, digital leaders must get to the point quickly before losing the attention of people.
While having this rigor, we also need to balance delivering the message in the simplest possible terms and making the processes for governance in the most effective ways.
One way of simplifying data is to clean data and remove duplications and errors. Reducing data sources and volumes when needed is also used to streamline data management processes.
We can achieve data simplicity through the proper data analysis, intelligence, powerful tools, and effective management strategies.
Our presentations must be concise and to the point. Dead from PowerPoint is a famous statement depicting inefficiencies of presentations using an excessive number of slides.
Speed to market is a fundamental requirement of businesses. This is because we can generate revenues only by acting very quickly.
An agile approach allows the team members to test their ideas iteratively. Then, if they fail, they fail quickly and cheaply without costing lots of funds to the initiatives.
Agile methods require multiple roles. The most common ones are the scrum master and the product owner. Accelerated intelligence for digital transformations requires developing quick mental models on how technology users interact with their solutions in each iteration.
Perfection equates to failure in fast-paced transformation programs. Taking extended times is not feasible in this digital age anymore. Consumers expect products and services much quicker than in old times. Our profitability depends on our speed to market.
The use of evolving methods such as DevOps is also a prime consideration for enabling modernization leading to substantial digital transformations. DevOps brings the software development and infrastructure support operations teams together in an integrated way.
Applying automation and standardization to our digital transformation objectives can reduce the number of resources required to maintain manual and tedious tasks.
Automation and standardization can address human errors and resolve potential errors quickly. Enterprises embracing agile cultures do not resist automation and standardization; in fact, they leverage the capabilities for modernization and transformation goals.
Silos are proven to slow the whole enterprise modernization and transformation lifecycle.
By leveraging the agile principles, we can pay special attention to collaboration, co-locations, and face-to-face teamwork rather than having silos and hierarchies in our organizations.
We continuously must focus on the priority items and deal with the backlog items based on priority orders.
One of the critical aspects of agile intelligence is creating a minimum viable product using agile principles. Managing every user story, clearing backlog items on a timely basis, and running a sprint is all about constant change.
Agile methods enable the principles of “fail fast, fail early, fail cheaply”. These principles are fundamental success factors for modernization and digital transformation goals.
Agile is a cost-focused and revenue-generating approach. As agile digital leaders, we are capable of turning costs into investment.
Collaboration refers to a team of people working for common goals. Their purpose is to achieve successful and synergetic outcomes.
Fusion refers to joining different things with various attributes or functions to create a single new entity or form. The notion of fusion relates to integration, blending, merging, amalgamation, synergy, and bonding.
Fusion is the most advanced and effective collaboration type, especially for complex and complicated modernization initiatives with unique goals and market focus. However, creating fusion-based collaboration can be very challenging.
Effective communication is an enabler of fusion goals. Depending on the context, both verbal and written communication types can be necessary for fusion to ensue.
The power of connecting people from diverse backgrounds for the same goal generates new ideas and insights. Some of these ideas and insights may touch people from different angles and motivate them to take on more responsibilities in this transforming ecosystem.
This magical aspect of fusion and collaboration leading to innovation is an ideal situation for transforming the enterprise.
As digital leaders, we influence our collaborators by demonstrating responsibility, accountability, and credibility. We can earn the trust of our collaborators with credibility and integrity. Consistency and predictability for our behavior are critical factors for credibility.
We can establish diversity with trust. When people start showing their true selves, a diverse culture starts flourishing. Diversity is an enhancer of collaboration and fusion.
The critical technology enablers of enterprise modernization and transformation goals are Cloud Computing, Mobile technologies, IoT, Big Data, and Data Analytics.
The most significant attribute of the Cloud is that the cloud service model can expand or reduce computer resources based on service requirements. Flexible workload movement is another crucial attribute of the Cloud service model.
For example, there may be times an organization needs to run their workloads in a different time zone, and the workloads can easily be moved to a data center in another country.
IoT technologies are emerging in the market, and IoT solutions are growing exponentially. As a result, consumers and service providers have an incredible interest and focus on IoT powered by the internet.
Big Data and Analytics are vital technologies and processes that we need to understand. The Big Data process refers to capturing an extensive amount of data from multiple sources. It covers processes such as storing, analyzing, searching, transferring, sharing, updating, visualizing, and governing vast volumes of data. These volumes can be in petabytes or even exabytes.
Big Data analytics is a broad and growing area. We can better understand Big data analytics by looking at its inherent characteristics. They are connection, conversion, cognition, configuration, content, customization, Cloud, cyber, and community.
Machine learning is a trending discipline. It is widely adopted. Machine learning refers to computer systems learning and improving based on their learning from analyzing large volumes of data sets without programming.
Text analytics include machine learning, computational linguistics, and traditional statistical analysis.
Text analytics focus on converting massive volumes of machine or human-generated text into meaningful structures to create business insights and support decision-making.
NLP (Natural Language Processing) is commonly used in various commercial products such as Siri by Apple, Watson by IBM, and Alexa by Amazon products.
Cybersecurity is a vast security domain covering every aspect of security management, such as identity and access management, authentication, authorization, encryption, and many more.
Since the network and associated communication technologies are the fundamental enablers of enterprise modernization goals, understanding the functions of the network and network implications such as security, latency, and bandwidth are also important topics.
Mobility is associated with several architectural and business considerations such as network access, compliance, data management, workplace demographics, end-user accountability, and BYOD concepts.
IT service management includes change, problem, incident, service level, capacity, availability, business continuity, and security management. Knowledge of ITIL (Information Technology Library) can be handy in communicating our service management needs to broader stakeholders in the enterprise.
Data is ubiquitous in every enterprise. However, big data is different from traditional data. The main differences come from characteristics such as volume, velocity, variety, veracity, value, and overall data sets in a data ecosystem.
At a high level, the data management lifecycle can include foundations, acquisitions, preparation, input, processing, output, interpretation, analytics, consumption, retention, backup, recovery, archival, and destruction. Some standard tools that we may consider are Hadoop MapReduce, Impala, Hive, Pig, and Spark SQL.
Once data analytics takes place, we turn data into information ready for consumption by the internal or external users, including customers of the organization. There may be regulatory requirements to destruct a particular type of data after a certain amount of time.
The data processing levels require architectural considerations. The processing levels could be raw data, validated data, transformed data, and calculated data.
Another structural classification of data in this platform is related to business relevance. We can categorize the business relevance of data as external data, personal data, departmental data, and enterprise data.
Business vocabulary describes the business content supported by the data models. But, more importantly, this vocabulary can be a crucial input to the metadata catalog; hence, it can be an enterprise concern.
The Big Data governance system needs to consider essential factors such as security, privacy, trust, operability, conformance, agility, innovation, and data transformation.
It is also vital that at a fundamental level, a data governance infrastructure be established and evolve for adoption at the enterprise level.
There are methods and many tools available on the market. However, as Big Data Analytics is relatively a new discipline, both methods and tools are still evolving.
Data lakes are fundamental and valuable aspects of Big Data lifecycle management. We can define data lakes in the simplest terms as the dynamically clean and instantly useable data sources made available for specific purposes.
Big Data solutions require heterogeneous technology and tools to fit the purpose. Therefore, it is essential to realize that no single technology or device can provide everything for developing Big Data solutions.
Open source is beneficial and widespread for information technology. Therefore, it is equally crucial for data analytics in the enterprise.
It is a licensing agreement that allows the developers and users to freely use the software, modify it, develop new ways to improve it, and integrate it into larger projects.
Some of the most popular Big Data and Analytics platforms with associated tools are Google BigQuery, Hortonworks Data Platform, HP Bigdata, IBM Big Data, Microsoft Azure, SAP Bigdata Analytics, Teradata Bigdata Analytics, and Amazon Web Services.
Managing mobile devices can be intimidating from many angles. In addition, the life cycle for mobile devices can be much shorter than for traditional computing and telecommunication devices.
Workers have multiple mobile phones. Having multiple mobile devices per person may mean that there would be thousands of mobile devices to consider at the enterprise level.
The security implications of mobile devices pose massive challenges. They create many security vulnerabilities for enterprises.
Mobile business intelligence (BI) is an essential requirement for enterprises to stay competitive, open new markets, and create new revenue streams.
The reality is that we cannot do business without the use of mobile devices anymore.
Mobility is an essential part of the enterprise. It touches every aspect of the enterprise. We cannot have a digital workplace without proper mobility architecture in place.
Talent is essential in enterprise modernization and transformation initiatives. Therefore, we need to understand the value and importance of talent. Without talent, our digital programs cannot progress and transform productively.
High-performance teams are necessary for the success of these programs. We must create proactive and engaged local technical teams and a community of practices as give-back activities.
We need to pay attention to both qualitative and quantitative measures. They both are essential for team success. They can help us manage complex matrix structures in business organizations.
As metric-oriented digital professionals, we can use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Team dashboards can help the team members and the business stakeholders see the trends and qualify and quantify progress in visual formats.
Enterprise Architects have strategic, architectural thinking, and design thinking skills. Domain Architects can architect a component or integrated components in their business units.
Infrastructure Architects are responsible for the underlying infrastructure such as network, servers, storage, platforms, and physical facilities such as data centers, and communications.
Finally, application Architects understand the functionality, operability, supportability, integration, and migration of applications.
The most common specialty areas are Security Architect, Data Architect, Information Architect, Network Architect, Mobility Architect, and Workplace Architect.
Technical specialists have distinct technology expertise covering a broad spectrum of technologies in all technological domains. Moreover, these specialists are technically eminent professionals in their chosen fields.
Business Analysts are critical resources to translate business requirements to technical requirements working with business stakeholders, architects, and technical specialists.
Mentoring and coaching is a cultural shift and the essential requirement of modernizing environments. Therefore, there must constantly be nurturing and knowledge transfer from top to bottom.
As digital leaders, we must be catalysts for ongoing change and serve as Agile Champions. Due to changing technologies, processes, and tools, as digital leaders, we need to learn rapidly and efficiently.
I attempted to show significant aspects and valuable considerations for digital intelligence using a structured approach.
I hope you found the framework easy to follow and the content concise, uncluttered, informative, and easy to read.
I overemphasized the architectural rigor on purpose. We cannot compromise the rigor aiming to improve products and services as a target outcome for modernization and transformation goals in the enterprise.
However, there must be a delicate balance between architectural rigor, business value, and speed to market.
Applying a pragmatic approach to multiple substantial transformation initiatives and complex modernization programs has been beneficial for me.
The key point is using an incrementally progressing iterative approach to every aspect of modernization initiatives, including people, processes, tools, and technologies as a whole.
This chapter concludes the book Digital Intelligence.
I hope that this book provides valuable insights into the broad topic of digital intelligence. We all need to enhance our digital intelligence in this century.
Thank you for reading.
Here are the chapters you can read on Medium.
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6a, Chapter 6b, Chapter 7a, Chapter 7b, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22
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