A shared vision between business and IT.
This is where many programs start to break down. Business and IT must align on what they are trying to achieve and why. If implementation begins with different expectations, misalignment compounds at every decision point. The vision also needs to be specific – vague aspirations don’t hold up when trade-offs need to be made.
Disruption Checklist for Software Leaders
Enterprise software leaders and investors should focus less on debating outcomes—and more on sequencing action.
Specifically:
A clear transformation architecture and roadmap.
Organizations need a fact-based understanding of their current state and a defined future-state vision that reflects strategic priorities. Rather than attempting to modernize everything at once, translate the gap into a phased roadmap that sequences initiatives, delivers incremental value, and aligns investment with organizational capacity. This roadmap should clarify priorities, funding, resource needs, and key trade-offs.
Defined outcomes with clear owners.
The vision should translate into three to five measurable metrics before work begins—such as cost per transaction, per-member-per-month costs, or reductions in IT spend. Each outcome should have a clearly assigned owner accountable for delivering and sustaining results.
Governance with clear decision authority. Modernization requires constant trade-offs between scope, timeline, cost, functionality, and long-term flexibility. Without clear decision-makers, those choices get pushed to committees and progress stalls. Assign a single accountable owner, define escalation paths early, and establish guiding principles for how trade-offs will be made.
