Translating Strategy into High Performance Capability

The Value Delivery Spine

The age-old challenge for organization leaders is two-fold — determining the most effective direction for the organization and then aligning the organization to that purpose. This challenge is the purview of CEOs, political, military, municipal, community, and other organizational leaders, who are in the high stakes position of understanding the ecosystem in which their organization lives and discerning the path that allows the organization to thrive.

This article focuses on how to align an organization to its purpose. This aligning-effort requires, in turn, capturing the hearts and minds of the team and then building the structures within the organization to support the direction. This process of setting direction, capturing hearts and minds, and then building support structures happens naturally under every leader for every organization since the dawn of leadership. That is not to say that it happens well. That directional alignment may fail. Alignment has a long history of frequent failure. Even for organizations that succeed in aligning, success might be marginal, yielding a slow shift due to poor performance and inefficient structures. This article outlines an approach to ensure our organization is aligned to the emerging purpose and supercharges the shift towards the new direction.

Strategic Drivers

We start this journey as we translate direction into strategy. ‘Strategy’ is that business-sexy term for the high-level framework necessary to achieve a chosen direction. That flippant description belies the level of effort and investment required to develop an effective strategy. I cover strategy development in detail in my article ‘Crafting a Living Strategy’. For this discussion we will focus on aspects that highly impact the necessary structural alignment — The type of success we are attempting to drive and the organization’s, given its state of maturity.

In Pursuit of Lasting Success

Success is in the eye of the beholder. Our definition is dependent on the type of organization for which we are defining success.

Government — Success might be measured in the impact to constituents for bills passed, effectiveness in dealing with economic, health, and education crises, handling disasters, and positioning itself against state and international actors.

Military & Hierarchical Municipal Services [e.g., police, fire fighters, etc.] — Success may consider operational readiness, resilience, ability to handle various types of crises, threats, logistical efficiencies, and so forth.

Business — Success here is measured in terms of revenue, profit margin, customer engagement and expectations, product and service quality, employee satisfaction, and ability to set and achieve stock owner expectations.

Non-governmental organizations / non-profits — Success might be measured in level of services delivered, efficiency for that delivery, and ability to provide stewardship for their target population.

Regardless of the appropriate success measures, each organization is seeking to ensure ongoing and growing success with resources in reserve to ensure resilience and the wherewithal to deal with unforeseen challenges. The organization’s team needs to understand how the organization measures success. Any infrastructure built to support the organization’s direction needs to support at least a subset of those success factors.

Maturity Phase Impacts to How we Define Success

The other key organizational aspect that informs infrastructure development is the organization’s maturity. There are all sorts of maturity models out there. For this discussion we will use a relatively simple model outlined in the ‘The Five Stages of Business Life Cycle’ article by CAIF. This article outlines five phases — seed & development, startup, growth & establishment, expansion, and maturity & exit. In describing each phase below we will focus on implications for infrastructure.

Seed & Development — Conceptual stage focused on minimum viable product [MVP] development. This stage is a ‘pre-revenue’ effort operating on a limited budget investment.

• Infrastructure Implications — By and large, the people are the infrastructure with minimal business process and systems support [e.g., spreadsheets, etc.]. This allows the organization to be extremely flexible and able to shift instantly to deal with opportunities and challenges.

Startup — Focused on narrow, iterative product development and delivery as well as adjustment as customer feedback is captured. While the organization is now capturing revenue, it initially needs to be augmented with additional investment. During these early days, with or without a supplementing revenue stream, the organizational / operational development budget is narrow. Additionally, survival requires substantial flexibility to adjust.

• Infrastructure Implications — Similarly to the seed & development phase, infrastructure is limited and composed mostly of people. Only mission critical aspects of the business — financial management, customer capture, and product delivery — have developed infrastructure. Organizational pain drives infrastructure development. Otherwise it is avoided.

Growth & Establishment — The organization is generating consistent income and is growing its customer base. Growth trends allow for reasonably accurate forecasting so a continuous spending budget can be established. The focus is on extending the growth as fast and long as possible. Anything not supporting growth is treated as a minimal necessity or a distraction.

• Infrastructure Implications — The growth supporting infrastructure becomes robust. While people development, cost containment, and other operational infrastructure is established, it gets limited attention and investment if it does not directly support growth. Flexibility is still highly valued so the culture is process-reluctant but adaptable.

Expansion — Business model has been proven successful. The organization is exploring other markets and looking for new ways to expand on its footprint. Challenges to continued expansion are the focus. As growth becomes more incremental and requires higher investment to achieve, we focus more on cost containment.

• Infrastructure Implications — All operations are at a level of robustness. Far greater focus is on cost containment and reduction. Efficiency becomes important. The organization is willing to give up some flexibility in return for efficiencies and good decision support. In this period, operations become a focus and are at their most sophisticated state.

Maturity & Exit — Business has been seeing great profit and may continue to expand or choose to exit.

• Infrastructure Implications — Cost minimization is the focus of the day so as to maximize the profitability of a static or declining business.

Large organizations with multiple businesses will be managing multiple business models in varying maturity states. Some use the businesses in expansion and maturity & exit phases as ‘cash cows’ using part of the revenue captured in those businesses to invest in newer businesses, creating a complex ecosystem in which infrastructure will address these multiple states often in uneven ways.

The Strategy — Capability Gap

If you have read any of my other articles, you have read my missives on the constant change with which we have to contend. Our operating ecosystem — economic cycles, shifting customer demand, emerging technology, competition, regulations, challenges, unexpected failures, attrition, and so on — is in constant flux. Add into that flux equation our maturity phase and shifts in direction, and we will have a continuous gap between the capability we need and the capability we have.

In my article, ‘Managing Large Scale Programs’ I split this gap into two parts — the operational and technical gaps. The operational gap is the gap between the current strategy and operational capabilities. The technical gap is the gap between operational capabilities demand and systems, platforms and tools deployed to support them. We operations folks are continuously working to close that capability gap, only to have the next shift open it right back up again. Years ago, I came to terms with the fact that developing operations is similar to building sandcastles between high tides. No matter how beautiful the castle is, the next high tide will wash it away. Thus, my pursuit of value. Operations infrastructure will come and go. However, value optimization will always be necessary.

To that point, my approach to operations infrastructure development is to identify our optimized-value infrastructure for this moment and our foreseeable future. In doing so, we will ultimately revisit the infrastructure as we identify emerging changes.

Addressing Emerging Changes

As I mentioned above, emerging changes cause new gaps requiring rapid redress. We know that filling that operational gap will take time and investment. So, in our ever-changing world the typical redress model is:

1. People become the infrastructure. As the gap emerges, the organization does not go on hold. The organization leader expects the folks in the organization to step in and make do, performing as well as possible to support the new direction. This will cause inefficiencies in getting the day-to-day work done.
2. We design the new processes and capabilities. We operations geeks develop and design processes and capabilities to support the new direction. We use the learnings from those who have stepped in to do the work and lay the architecture in place, manually testing it to make sure it meets the needs. These operations are established as either — ‘tribal’ [common, organically developed understanding among participants] or ‘on-paper’ [documented operations and processes without tooling support].
3. We institutionalize the new capabilities, building them into supporting systems and platforms to efficiently manage transactions, data, and reporting and ensure the greatest efficiency and effectiveness of the operations.

Through this three-step framework we rapidly learn:

• What we can leave in the hands of people maintaining maximum flexibility, [people as the process]
• What needs a general common approach with local spins on how it gets done but requires no tools for effective performance.
• What needs a tightly managed systemic process to ensure transactional, data management, and reporting efficacy.

Regardless of where any one activity lands in that framework, the focus should be on the necessary value that it delivers, as measured by our organization, and the form that maximizes that value. [Tool curated process]

Value Assurance Mechanisms

The rest of this article is focused on the entire value spine that translates strategy into new capabilities. However, before we walk through the value spine stages, we will first address the durable mechanisms we established to support the value creation efforts. The mechanism has three distinct entities, each with a specific role in solution delivery. Those entities are direction setting/decision making, execution oversight, and the solution design/build/delivery effort.

These bodies and the efforts they drive interact with each other to deliver solutions regardless of the structure that they are in. They can be casual or formalized, centralized or federated, organic / laissez faire or prescribed. For the gap filling efforts decisions are made, the portfolio is adjusted, and build/delivery work is completed. Any level of defined structure, for these efforts, is placed to better ensure delivery success in the most efficient way. With that in mind, let’s explore each of those bodies.

Direction Setting / Decision Making

This group sets the direction of the organization and owns the efforts and resources required to deliver on the organization’s strategy. Filling the identified capability gap between where we are and where we need to be is on their dime. So this group has a deeply vested interest in this effort’s success.

Focus — This group sets organization direction, priorities, roadmaps, commitments, and expectations. As plan meets reality and issues arise, they entertain escalations and make trade off decisions.

Body — This is the organization’s executive leadership composed of solution owners, policy owners, and other resource owners. This group brings the total context for the organization’s ecosystem so that program portfolio decisions can be made fully understanding the implications.

What’s in a name? — These direction setting / decision making bodies go by steering team, executive committee, board of directors, C-suite executives, regulatory approval board, launch oversight committee, etc. depending on the scope of the effort and impact to the organization.

Execution Oversight

This group is tasked with optimizing portfolio value as design / delivery reality requires program adjustments. As issues and escalations occur they look across the entire portfolio of activities to assess implications and opportunities for collaborative support. They generate updates to the decision making body and make recommendations for adjustments to programs and the portfolio while maintaining the ‘big picture’. This effort is largely tactical, adjusting the support framework as necessary, making narrow assignment adjustments that do not affect the overall efforts, and making proposals when more significant change is needed.

Focus — Establishing program and change management best practices and support. Monitoring progress for all programs within the portfolio. Assessing program and portfolio value when changes are necessary. Establishing and managing cadence for updates and decision making events.

Body — Typically includes the PMO/transformation lead and program leads. This group is close to the program efforts while maintaining awareness of other contextual factors.

What’s in a name? — This body goes by program management office [PMO], transformation office, program execution office, portfolio management team, etc. depending again on the scope of the effort and impact to the organization.

Design / Build / Delivery

This group is tightly focused on their program / project and doing the real, on the ground, day-to-day work to manifest the solution. The team is doing build sprints and then testing the results to validate the new capability.

Focus — Beyond the aspect of the build that each member is responsible for generating, they work with customers / users to review and test new capabilities for solution efficacy. Additionally, they manage dependencies with other teams necessary for the delivery of the full solution. Their outlook is limited to the current build sprint which lasts a matter of weeks. These people are heads down doing the actual work of providing the solution.

Body — Individual contributors assigned various aspects of the solution build. They work closely with each other to ensure the solution hangs together. Additionally, they test concepts and test the partially built capability with users and work closely with other team partners to ensure dependencies are covered.

What’s in a name? — These teams go by program team, project team, scrum team, operations team, change management team, etc. depending on the scope and methodologies used to execute the program.

The Durable Mechanism

The above-described mechanism that provides for decision-making, value optimization, and execution of the work required to deliver solutions is a durable structure that supports all portfolio efforts. Individual programs will spin up, have a life, and then spin down. However, this three-part mechanism remains. Each aspect of the mechanism may go by various names over time and take different forms specific to the organization’s needs. Regardless, the three aspects are required to ensure that we effectively bridge the gap between the capabilities we have and the capabilities we need.

These mechanisms and how they operate will be discussed in more detail as we tackle each stage of the value spine.

Value Delivery Spine

We started this discussion seeking an approach to optimizing organizational alignment to its direction, maximizing the value of the alignment efforts to the degree we can. If we were to create a business that sold widgets. And, the demand remained steady; while we push out the same number of widgets to the same widget users year-after-year, the organization would organically, in the long run, optimize alignment to that demand, delivering widgets with the lowest effort, cost, and investment. It’s the nature of running an organization that we try to optimize our situation to the organization’s benefit.

Unfortunately, no such pristine situation exists. Additionally, in that scenario, we would endure an extended period of inefficiencies while we allow organic alignment to occur. In the real world, we deal with demand fluctuations, changes in customer desires, competition, and all sorts of environmental changes. Organizational direction changes over time and, during times of disruption, can experience radical, unanticipated shifts. Given the pace of technology changes, global competitive shifts, and narrow margins of victory, alignment to the new direction needs to happen as fast as possible, ideally instantly. This means that we need to be incredibly mindful of that alignment effort. That means that every stage of that effort must be optimized. Those phases are tied together in the Value Delivery Spine.

In pursuit of value maximization, efforts along the value delivery spine should be undertaken if they better secure successful outcomes.

The value delivery spine starts with an adjusted or new direction and ends after the delivery of the necessary aligning capability as the organization adjusts into the new normal.

During each stage of the value delivery spine, we add a critical piece of the puzzle necessary to move the organization from its current state to the new normal. The value assurance bodies are engaged in various ways for each stage. The direction setting / decision making body is engaged in all stages. The execution oversight body engages as current term commitments are being developed and operates throughout the rest of the stages. The Design-Build-Delivery body supports solution proposal and delivery stages.

You can see that the decision making body has high stakes in the effort as they will own the ‘new normal’ that the solution capabilities deliver. The execution oversight body steps in as we define the current term efforts and manages the tactics required to deliver the solutions. The design-build-delivery team focuses deeply on the solutioning effort in their hands. Their work covers only two value delivery spine stages, which belies the effort required during these stages. The level of investment and effort required to translate a concept into reality during these two stages far outstrips the other stages.

Value Delivery Spine with Operational Support Mechanisms

Directional Strategy

Business leaders, politicians, public service executives, military leaders, and community organizers are positioned for their ability to generate a novel vision and align their organizations to the cause. This ability is the rationale for the massive compensation packages that business leaders receive. If these leaders correctly read the environmental factors, and internal wherewithal, devising a direction that leads to strong growth and durable positioning, they receive the reward, the organization wins. If they get it wrong, the organization will be weakened, impaired, or even disbanded.

Since the stakes are so high for this effort, it pays to build out a capability within the organization to analyze external opportunities, challenges, and ecosystem trends, as well as internal strengths and weaknesses. We use these assessments to determine the ‘best path’ to growth, durability, and, to the degree conditions allow, stability of our organization. Generating that direction and the strategy to get there is the work of the strategy development stage.

Body Engagement — The analyses to support this effort will require an externally focused group assessing ecosystem trends. Additionally, the effort will draw assessments from all organizational functions, which taxes the entire organization. However, while contributions are captured via a wide net, the effort remains in the purview of only one of our value assurance mechanism bodies.

• Direction Setting / Decision Making — The analyses and assessments are considered by the organization leader or leadership body, while setting the path forward. The output may include changes to the organization’s vision, direction, priorities, mission, values, and meta-roadmaps. It also informs functional leaders in their considerations for business model changes.
• Execution Oversight — No engagement.
• Design-Build-Delivery — No engagement.

A Deeper Dive — To learn more about strategy development please read my article, “Crafting a Living Strategy”.

Refreshing the Business Model

In its most generic form, business models are designed to create offerings that meet a demand. Those offerings are a value-add to the organization’s inputs and manifest in products, services, intelligence or a combination of them.

Drilling into the model, three critical efforts are accomplished by any business model.

• Establishing direction and strategy with targets for audience / clients / customers, markets, etc, either as a sole entity or in collaboration with alliance partners.
• Developing new offerings in the form of products, services and/or intelligence.
• Delivery of current products, services and/or intelligence to meet demand.

While these three business model aspects are always in place, their completion and delivery approaches vary widely between industries, markets, and individual organizations. The general model for government, non-governmental organizations [NGOs], and non-profits are, with the investments on hand, providing services and meeting readiness standards. Business models are focused on growth and wherewithal as measured by revenue and profit margin. We will provide a few examples to help bring home the point.

Typical Business Models

Most business today is transacted through three models — Business-to-Customer [B2C], Business-to-Business [B2B], and provide-client connection platforms.

B2C — The enterprise provides products and services directly to customers. Whether you are picking up milk at the grocery store or streaming your favorite series on Netflix, you are engaging a B2C model. These types of client engagements may be transactional [single purchase at the point of sales] or require an ongoing engagement [such as with utility providers or application subscriptions].

B2B — The company provides products and services to other businesses. These offerings come in the form of high cost engagements such as automotive fleet sales, corporate travel agreements, enterprise platform deployments, and so on. These types of offerings almost always require an ongoing relationship with formal, negotiated contracts with sophisticated, demanding clients.

Market Platforms — These platform businesses connect service providers with clients. They are unique [to the B2C and B2B models] in that the providers and clients can switch roles. Examples of this model include companies such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, etc.

Whichever model is appropriate for your organization, the structure we set up will include consideration of sales channels, supply chain, product development schema, partnerships, alliances, suppliers, and other business structure big blocks.

Body Engagement — Once the broad strokes of the business model are established the effort falls to functional leadership to architect the big block mentioned above.

• Direction Setting / Decision Making — The business model architecture remains with this body. It becomes more functionally focused in that, for example, the sales executive will design the delivery channels model while the supply chain executive is focused on developing the model for converting raw materials into finished products. In the meantime, the engineering executive is determining what should be designed and developed in-house vs. purchased from an external expert.
• Execution Oversight — No engagement.
• Design-Build-Delivery — No engagement.

A Deeper Dive — For a deeper understanding of business models please see my article “Refreshing Your Business Model.”

Current Commitments

With our direction, strategy and business model in place, we need to determine what we will first get done. Strategy is a long term play typically rolling out over years. The efforts to ‘perfect’ the business model also roll out during the life of the strategy, building in the most critical aspects first, and then improving it incrementally.

To effectively deliver solutions that meet the capability demands of the business model we need to understand our priorities, the commitments we will achieve in this upcoming term, and the conditions of satisfaction we need to achieve those commitments satisfactorily. There is no one right way to structure priorities, commitments, and conditions of satisfaction. There are a number of frameworks available to tie strategic priorities to our current commitments. One such approach has gained popularity, especially in the technology industry, mainly — Objectives & Key Results [OKRs]. We will use the OKR framework to make th concepts more concrete.

Most companies undergo an annual planning process which may or may not adjust direction, strategy, mission, and values depending on the demand for change. However, the effort always results in developed current or next-term commitments. For organizations that use OKRs, those commitments are developed in the form of KRs. For annual planning the ‘term’ is usually the upcoming year. The goal of the effort is a clear picture for where we need to be at the end of the term, providing a crisp, ambitious framework within which to develop solution proposals and set up our delivery programs.

Body Engagement — This formal effort occurs on a standard cadence and keeps the organization aligned on achieving a specific scope and level of performance expectations.

• Direction Setting / Decision Making — In terms of establishing a clear direction and organizational performance expectations, this is the last key piece that the leadership team is driving into the organization.
• Execution Oversight — Provides input into the annual planning process in the form of previous term performance for delivering solutions and current-state performance of the delivered solutions.
• Design-Build-Delivery — Not engaged.

A Deeper Dive — To learn more about establishing current commitments please read my articles, ‘Supporting High Stakes Decision Making’, “Leading Enterprise Transformation”, “Solutioning for Value” and “The Power of Culture” series.

Proposed Solutions

With Objectives establishing our priorities and Key Results setting our commitments for this term, we can now turn to developing solutions that fill, or at least partially fill, the gap in meeting the needs of the business model. The solution proposal effort establishes what we believe, given the current state of our knowledge and experience, will meet the KR criteria. Resource and technology limitations will likely render the specified solution imperfect in meeting the KR criteria. However, in this effort we define the options and pick the option most likely to succeed in delivering most or all of the KR criteria.

We start first by defining the problem, to a fair degree of detail, and achieving alignment around the problem, and then proposing a solution that resolves that problem. That solution may have both operational capability related and technology related considerations.

Body Engagement — We have moved out of the realm of strategy and big picture direction setting to the tactic of solution development. The execution oversight body takes the lead in driving the solutioning work, engaging experts and heavy users in structuring the solution options. At this point we are developing a nascent, barebones delivery team[s] to support the solutioning effort.

• Direction Setting / Decision Making — This body establishes the solutioning boundaries and reviews / selects the solution option we will pursue.
• Execution Oversight — Establishes the common framework with which we present the solution options so we are comparing apples to apples. Coordinates the solutioning and presentation effort. The leaders within this body drive the solutioning effort.
• Design-Build-Delivery — Provides specific solution input from their expert perspective.

A Deeper Dive — To learn more about solutioning please read my articles, “Solutioning for Value”, “Building Resilient Operations” and “Building Product Operations from Scratch”.

Solution Delivery Programs

We are now deep into execution. We have our approved solution in hand and are doing the detailed work of delivering it. We are not only standing up the program team[s] for full-time build engagement, but also pulling in part-time experts and heavy users to assist in designing and testing the developing solution. This effort requires both program management and change management expertise.

Body Engagement — This stage is the period in which all the concepts, analysis, and performance assumptions manifest in tangible capability that changes the way we do business.

• Direction Setting / Decision Making — Acts as a steering team providing program delivery and change management oversight, vetting escalations and making tradeoff decisions.
• Execution Oversight — Establishes and manages a fully fleshed-out program delivery plan for each solution with milestones, resourcing requirements, performance metrics, readiness requirements, adoption targets, update reporting, and generating tradeoff options.
• Design-Build-Delivery — Heads down either supporting design or actually building out the new capability.

A Deeper Dive — To learn more about solution delivery programs please read my articles, “Managing Large Scale Programs‘, ‘Guiding Organizations through Change’ and ‘The Heart of the Value Delivery Machine — The PMO’.

The New Normal

Once we have delivered the new capabilities to the organization and hit our adoption targets, we have achieved a new normal that much more closely meets the business model requirements. There is, of course, more to do in perfecting the business model. We will likely experience multiple new normals as we pursue our strategic direction. In the new normal, the organization is competently and effectively managing the new capabilities. [If they are not competently and effectively operating, we have failed in program delivery.] The functions now own the capability and are managing its support tiers. The program teams have effectively released the effort and are moving on to new program work unless the individual team members are also functional owners.

Body Engagement — Now that the solution has been delivered, the mindset shifts to incremental improvements to that capability and learning from its delivery.

• Direction Setting / Decision Making — Functional owners take on management of the capabilities moving forward, providing feedback on the priorities for future solution delivery.
• Execution Oversight — Completes retrospectives on the effort to incorporate learning for future program delivery.
• Design-Build-Delivery — Decommits from that specific solution delivery effort and moves on to new program work, or is subsumed back into their native function.

A Deeper Dive — To learn more about the state of the new normal, please read my articles, “Creating a Leadership Incubator”, “Building Resilient Operations” and “Building Product Operations from Scratch”.

Takeaways

All organizations are in pursuit of lasting success, however they might measure it, in a shifting environment. Organization leaders do their best to set a direction that navigates lasting success in that environment. That ever adjusting pursuit forces us to continuously correct the business model, sometimes incrementally, sometimes in radical leaps, to support that direction. Those business model corrections call for a continuous influx of new capability. The value delivery spine ensures that we are delivering the highest impact capabilities as efficiently as possible.

In translating strategy into high performance capabilities, we have established an overview of strategy development, establishing commitments, solution development, program delivery, and establishing a new normal. This value delivery spine also provides an outline for all of the articles in my blog. The key aspects of this translation of strategy to capability has a few highlights.

Transformation / change efforts must consider not only external and internal forces. It must also take into account the maturity phase of the organization and its wherewithal to handle structured change. These considerations must be taken when establishing solution proposals.

To optimize the value delivery spine we structure a persistent value delivery mechanism which consists of three bodies, each tasked with a specific role. Each body may go by many names. Regardless, the general three-body-mechanism with their specific roles are in place for any large organizational transformation effort.

Direction Setting / Decision Making — Organizational leader or leadership body tasked with setting the organizational direction and decision making on how we fill the gap between the capabilities we have and the capabilities we need. They own the outcome of the value delivery efforts.

Execution Oversight — Tasked with optimizing the value of the portfolio in ensuring that we are addressing our highest priorities and effectively performing solution build and delivery execution within our constraints.

Design-Build-Delivery — Team[s] focused on solution build and delivery designing, building, testing, launching, and ultimately ensuring adoption targets are met.

Value Delivery Spine with Operational Supporting Mechanisms

The Value Delivery Spine Stages

The value delivery spine entails six stages that, if structured mindfully, work in unison to optimize value delivery.

Directional Strategy — Establishes the organization vision, mission, values, strategy, and roadmap. To learn more about strategy development please read my article, “Crafting a Living Strategy”.

Refreshing the Business Model — Identifies the business model changes required to pursue the strategic direction. I will be addressing business model development in a future article.

Establishing Current Commitments — Based on strategic priorities, establishes hard commitments for the current or upcoming term, typically a year. To learn more about establishing current commitments please read my articles, ‘Supporting High Stakes Decision Making’, “Leading Enterprise Transformation”, “Solutioning for Value” and “The Power of Culture” series.

Proposed Solutions — Establishes potential solutions for filling the business model gap, from which the organization leadership will select the ‘best’ option and authorize development work. To learn more about solutioning please read my articles, “Solutioning for Value”, “Building Resilient Operations” and “Building Product Operations from Scratch”.

Solution Delivery Programs — The solution is built out and all of its capabilities tested before making it available to the broad organization. To learn more about solution delivery programs please read my articles, “Managing Large Scale Programs‘, ‘Guiding Organizations through Change’ and ‘The Heart of the Value Delivery Machine — The PMO’.

The New Normal — Once the adoption targets have been achieved and the new capability is relatively stable, the capability ownership is transferred to the function. We are operating in a new normal that will again adjust as additional new capability arrives. To learn more about the state of the new normal, please read my articles, “Creating a Leadership Incubator”, “Building Resilient Operations” and “Building Product Operations from Scratch”.

Find more articles from Sarah at: www.operations-architect.com.