Cloud Value Transformation — What gets Measured gets Done!
During a recent Client engagement I was struck by the fact that the organization had been on their Cloud Journey for 2–3 years, but the question was still being asked, Why Cloud?
The Executive responsible for the Cloud journey needed help to convince his peers and the board of the value of Cloud. This required more than a marketing slide pack on the generic benefits of Cloud, it needed to demonstrate the impact for this organization.
Using a Balanced Scorecard approach we iterated with the Executive to define:
- The business drivers for Cloud
- How does the Journey to Cloud make a difference to the company?
- How do we objectively measure success?
The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) delivers the ability for an organization to objectively evaluate the performance and success of the Cloud Transformation Journey.
1. What are the Drivers for Cloud?
At the simplest level the BSC identifies the drivers for Cloud as per example 1 below….
These high level business drivers are typically found in the annual report and IT strategy materials. They are likely to resemble some of those illustrated above.
2. How does the Journey to Cloud make a difference to the company?
In order to explore what success looks like for each driver Cloud Value Statements were captured. Their purpose is to define the outcomes from the journey to Cloud (similar to the Hills in Design Thinking).
Here are a couple of examples…
The key here is to identify target outcomes that will make a significant difference to the organization. The defined outcomes should resonate with Executives in the organization, addressing known challenges, and/or key business goals in a specific timeframe.
This is ultimately what your Cloud organization is signing up to deliver.
3. How do we objectively measure Success?
For each driver, objectives are defined and the associated KPIs. These KPIs demonstrate the measurable value that Cloud Adoption and Transformation could provide.
This is a generic example, in reality we went through multiple iterations to understand what would work well for this Client.
The KPIs
Some KPIs targeted pain, for example, the planned versus actual costs resonated as the team were seeing cloud cost challenges.
Others reflected the strategic direction, for example, show back, then charge back were aspirational, so being able to measure this would help capture progress.
Some KPIs didn’t exist so a baseline would need to be created. For some of these the current status is listed as ‘not available’.
In the first instance the aim was to capture 2 or 3 objectives for each driver and associated KPIs. Additional measures were captured for future use which would assess further success, for example aligning to the work of specific teams e.g. Service Management.
For reference, also see the earlier Cloud Engagement Hub article from Greg Hintermeister on measurements
What was the outcome?
Some of the benefits included:
- Clarification on the key goals and challenges for the Cloud journey
- it was the first time this had been written down and agreed - Clarification on where the real value could be achieved
- Improved understanding of existing metrics and correlation of these to transformational initiatives that could provide value
Ultimately this helped the Executive to demonstrate where the organization could see valuable outcomes and build support for why the journey to Cloud was the right way forwards.
The intention looking ahead is to track and manage the BSC goals and their KPIs so the organization can see the impact of their journey to Cloud over time.
In Summary
Peter Drucker is well known for the phrase, “What gets measured gets done”. Without this element to the Cloud journey it is in danger of losing its way and losing Executive support. This approach provides focus and information to make decisions and to assess progress.
As you invest in various Cloud activities in 2020 and beyond, ask yourself how are you measuring the success of your Cloud journey?
If you are already measuring the success please share what has worked well for you in the comments.
Thank you to the team
This kind of work needs a lot of brainstorming. The colleagues that co-created and refined the example scorecard included:
Ndu Emuchay (IBM Fellow, Cloud Engagement Hub),
Moises Galvan (IBM Cloud Adoption Leader, Cloud Acceleration Team), and
Sumit Patel (IBM Cloud Adoption Leader, Cloud Acceleration Team).
