01
How Do You Balance Tech, People
Processes?
Shodhan says the industry-standard modernization approach, called the R-model, includes four strategies: retiring, replatforming, refactoring and rearchitecting. These are important, but only focus on the technology.
“If you just re-architect the technology and don't upskill your people…or don't change your processes, then you've effectively created more friction,” says Shodhan. Thoughtworks adds two holistic strategies to the mix:
Thoughtworks helps clients shed old processes that are no longer working, reimagining core capabilities to deliver meaningful outcomes and a positive, measurable ROI. They ask enterprises an important query: How do you envision the future of your business capabilities? Shodhan says any future system needs to be designed with future needs in mind. “If you don't need a business process from 20 years ago, you can let go of it,” he says. “And what we've found is, by letting go of that old business process, you get rid of some technology that was focused specifically for that business process.”
Reimagine Business Capabilities
Reset Engineering
Culture
Thoughtworks also helps clients reset engineering teams and talent with modern disciplines so they can thrive and adapt to changes, Shodhan says. “You might even, in some cases, be able to make some roles redundant and use them at other places,” he says.
Altogether, he says their approach ensures sustainable transformation for an entire business, from technology to people and process by creating more alignment.
Document
Long-Term Vision
Another Thoughtworks customer, consumer credit reporting company Experian, worked with the consultancy to transition from a mainframe to a new cloud environment. Experian’s CIO Conor Whelan says it’s vital that any modernization plan sets up future employees and stakeholders for success, which requires documenting the long-term tech roadmap, the decision-making process and risks and opportunities upfront.
“[Having] a record of the decision that's being made [is essential],” he says. “It's normally years gone by, and often the people that made those decisions are not around and somebody's picking up the pieces.”
The complexities of modernization are often underestimated, says Rima Olinger, Director of Consulting Partners at Amazon Web Services, a strategic partner of Thoughtworks. “A comprehensive yet rapid assessment and prioritization model considering both business value and technical feasibility is crucial.” Getting that clarity helps leaders proactively avoid impediments such as attempting to address too many applications at once.
Thoughtworks collaborates with clients to outline large tech initiatives and align them with their biggest priorities to keep organizations focused on key drivers that move the business value needle. “Tell us the most important thing and then we will make sure all of our decisions are aligned to that relative importance,” Shodhan says.
Tie Tech Plans To Business Priorities
IT decision makers want to identify their “North Star”—the modernization project vision and mission—to ensure teams use it as a guide. But to foster continuous stakeholder engagement and harmony throughout the process, Shodhan says leaders should establish formats for information sharing and ongoing synchronization. To pinpoint and sustain your north star:
How Do You Establish And Maintain Your North Star?
02
Get Comfortable
Changing Plans
Business isn’t stagnant. Priorities shift along with market dynamics and tech advancements. Shodhan says regularly evaluating decisions ensures versatile, adaptable architecture. “The world changes…so if there's a change in six months…change those trade-offs, and then the plan changes again,” he says.
One of Thoughtworks' key architectural principles is "evolutionary architecture"—which relies on embracing the fact that change is constant in the technology world. It’s better to build to evolve rather than build to last, Shodhan says.
Shodhan says Thoughtworks does an exercise with clients called trade-off sliders, where leaders rank top product features and priorities, such as user experience, security, budget and timeline. This helps teams make conscious decisions between conflicting qualities or attributes that result from instituting new tech or architecture.
“It's hard to say, ‘revenue expansion is not important to me’ [or] ‘cost takeout is not important.’ No CXO is going to say that,” Shodhan says. “But by communicating consensus-driven ranking of these trade-offs, leaders are helping teams by making a clear and succinct statement on what is more important to them versus less for the current window of time.”
Rank Initiatives
By Impact
With finite resources and budget, leaders will likely find themselves making trade-offs along their modernization journey. Sometimes organizations are focused on revenue expansion, and sometimes they’re focused on cost take out. Modernization projects are the “what” for organizations, but defining their “why” is crucial; Shodhan says consistently referring back to their “why” during decision-making serves as a litmus test, ensuring teams stay true to the project’s original intent and blueprint.
And trade-offs aren’t a bad thing, he adds; triaging can help enterprises focus on key initiatives with the most impact. To align on priorities and build a flexible strategy:
How Do
You Manage Competing Priorities?
03
Balance Offensive And Defensive Benefits
Shodhan says for a modernization plan to be valuable, it’s important to consider both “defensive benefits” (such as risk mitigation, cost reduction and compliance) and “offensive benefits” (such as growth, innovation and gaining a competitive advantage). Adopting this comprehensive lens helps enterprises avoid strategic misalignment by only zeroing in on mitigation or overlooking opportunities for more progress.
“We are saying, ‘Think of defensive benefits and offensive benefits, and that's when you have a good investment case,’” Shodhan says.
“It’s important to remain outcome-focused when undergoing transformation,” says AWS’s Olinger. To measure the success of their modernization efforts, Experian worked with Thoughtworks to develop a rubric, quantifying risks like technical debt, opportunity risk and time to change alongside positive outcomes like increased revenue and speed to market.
The objective lens helped guide decisions. “We had a consistent way across the different technology domains of scoring risk,” says Experian’s Whelan. “We tried to put a bit of science behind it and remove some of the bias that individuals had.”
Score Risk Factors
Shodhan says holistic modernization focuses on mitigating risk and achieving transformative benefits. For efforts to succeed, leaders need to consider both sides. To take stock of your risks and rewards:
How Do
You Manage Risk And Opportunity?
04
According to Forbes Research, 60% of CxOs agree that their digital transformation efforts will evolve beyond adoption to optimization, integrating tech for seamless processes and data-driven insights. But to get there, sustainable modernization involves more than just adopting the latest innovations.
Shodhan says when done right, modernization is an evolutionary process that can build upon early triumphs.
“Drive towards delivering early value,” Shodhan says. “Try to achieve something in under three months no matter how small it is, and then incrementally and iteratively start delivering additional value. That will drive great motivation and momentum and ensure that the modernization program keeps money flowing in.”
A Modern Approach To Modernization
Conclusion
of CxOs agree their digital transformation efforts will evolve beyond adoption to optimization, integrating tech for seamless processes and data-driven insights.
60%
Source: Forbes Research CxO Growth 4.0 Survey, 2024
Continuously Engage Stakeholders
A comprehensive modernization effort involves multiple stakeholders, from the initial decision phase through adoption. Experian held standups with technology owners responsible for implementation, along with business process owners overseeing specific business units. “[We did that] just to get some comfort and confidence on the approach…and over time people did get more and more involved and the program was a huge success,” Whelan says.
AWS’s Olinger echoes this approach. “When business and financial executives, line of business leaders and delivery teams are all bought in, [modernization] becomes a business project rather than a technology project.”