INTRODUCTION:
An experienced data and cloud professional with a track record in business transormation, Noah provides insight into the relationship between businss stakeholders and technology teams and we focus on the best way to communicate business objectives, challenges faced and key considerations when creating a roadmap.
VINTAGE:
What is a key challenge you face when you are making business decisions based on technology recommendations?
NT:
When strategically evaluating potential technology solutions, it’s not uncommon to see assessments made through an end state lens.
Cases might touch on…
• Alignment with business objectives
• Satisfying business requirements provided
• Architectural fit
• Level of effort required
• Benefits/Risks
• Costs
These are all great points to make a case, but they are all assumptions based on a successfully completed implementation. A key challenge is ensuring potentially disruptive variables are considered, and these may not be found in requirements or objectives. Such variables have potential to reveal the “best” solution on paper and the “right” solution for the business might be different.
Here are a couple examples…
Adoption
Does this solution complement user skill sets, or will there be a significant learning curve where reskilling/upskilling is required?
How might current roles change?
Will existing tools continue to receive troubleshooting support if integrated with this solution?
Time to Value
Will this be a phased implementation where capabilities are introduced incrementally until full functionality is realized?
Can legacy code be utilized as-is, or will it need to be converted?
VINTAGE:
Can you provide insight into how you communicate business objectives with technical teams?
NT:
I assume most that are reading this are familiar with Simon Sinek’s “start with why” mantra.
It’s a simple concept that is incredibly empowering: why you do something is more important than either what you do or how you do it. I like to apply this approach to clearly tie tactical execution to strategic objectives.
An example might look like this…
(Why)
“As a customer-centric organization, we do our best to cultivate strong customer relationships by sending the right message to the right person at the right time. That’s why a big objective for this year is for Marketing to leverage the data & analytics capabilities we develop to optimize engagement and drive $X in new business revenue.”
(How)
“So how will we do that? One way is by leveraging predictive analytics to understand our customers’ propensity toward certain behaviors and interests through their spending patterns.”
(What)
“To identify specific spending patterns, we need to accurately classify itemized transactions into spend categories, which can then be leveraged as variables in propensity models. So the strength of this transaction classification you’ll be working on will directly impact the effectiveness of those propensity models – and that effectiveness is what we’re counting on to accomplish this new business revenue objective.”
Q3. What key principles do you consider when creating and presenting a new roadmap?
Easy to read
This document fosters alignment, and therefore must be bclear and concise
Objective-driven
Keeps focus on why we’re doing what we’re doing
Goals, Strategy, Execution
Just enough detail for stakeholders to understand what is to be delivered and when for goals to be achieved
Flexible
Must anticipate requirements will change at some point, so the roadmap is to serve as an adaptable guide that keeps stakeholders informed on what’s coming
VINTAGE:
What learning material do you follow? Ie/ podcasts, blogs, websites, books?
Book
Creating a Data-Driven Organization -O’Reilly
Great Course on Udemy
Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2020 by Stephane Maarek
Blogs/Websites
KDNuggets
DATAVERSITY
ZDNet
Smart Data Collective
VINTAGE:
Thanks for your time Noah. It will give the readers a real insight into business decision making in relation to technology teams.
