Thoughtworks’ Post

Sharath Satish, Nittish Veeraputhirasamy, and Khushboo Dutt, helped me put together research on why digital transformations failed or went off course. We looked at a number of companies that failed in their first attempt and looked at Thoughtworks to bring it back on track. We chose 23 of them who were willing to share details from the past. The combined revenue of these 23 companies was over $360Bn. Much was at stake as you can imagine. 10 themes emerged. Interestingly, the majority of them were non-tech issues. Another majority had nothing to do with the perceived technical skills of the previous partner.  I am listing the ten themes below in their frequency of occurrence, 1st one being the most frequently recurring. I would be keen to hear your thoughts and journeys. 01 No line of sight & lack of feedback #blindsighted 02 Initiatives & agendas are not aligned with business outcomes #businesscasegonedry 03 Unable to attract & retain the right talent #talentvotedwithfeet 04 Eagerness to declare success #missionaccomplished2soon 05 Underestimating the blast radius of transformation #notatechupgrade 06 Evolution beyond the first few releases not factored in plan #darwinrules 07 Changing tech landscapes caused synchromesh issues #seismicshifts 08 Inability to embrace legacy technologies and refactor effectively #fowler4strangler 09 Talent pushes back #quorum4change 10 Underestimating the complexity of legacy applications #spagghetticode 11 (Bonus) Platform aspirations went awry #isplatformoverrated Marcelo De Santis AgilityHealth David Robinson Dinker Charak Sachin Dharmapurikar

Sharath Satish, Nittish Veeraputhirasamy, and Khushboo Dutt, helped me put together research on why digital transformations failed or went off course. We looked at a number of companies that failed in their first attempt and looked at Thoughtworks to bring it back on track. We chose 23 of them who were willing to share details from the past. The combined revenue of these 23 companies was over $360Bn. Much was at stake as you can imagine. 10 themes emerged. Interestingly, the majority of them were non-tech issues. Another majority had nothing to do with the perceived technical skills of the previous partner.  I am listing the ten themes below in their frequency of occurrence, 1st one being the most frequently recurring. I would be keen to hear your thoughts and journeys. 01 No line of sight & lack of feedback #blindsighted 02 Initiatives & agendas are not aligned with business outcomes #businesscasegonedry 03 Unable to attract & retain the right talent #talentvotedwithfeet 04 Eagerness to declare success #missionaccomplished2soon 05 Underestimating the blast radius of transformation #notatechupgrade 06 Evolution beyond the first few releases not factored in plan #darwinrules 07 Changing tech landscapes caused synchromesh issues #seismicshifts 08 Inability to embrace legacy technologies and refactor effectively #fowler4strangler 09 Talent pushes back #quorum4change 10 Underestimating the complexity of legacy applications #spagghetticode 11 (Bonus) Platform aspirations went awry #isplatformoverrated Marcelo De Santis AgilityHealth David Robinson Dinker Charak Sachin Dharmapurikar