How to start with a Cloud transformation journey that will last a lifetime.

In the first part of our blog series, we started with step 1 and 2: defining the IT capabilities and laying out an accountability model that is NOT the Spotify model. 😉
So next up: deciding on an operating model and bringing all our assets together to make it work! Let’s go.

✅ Step 1: Organize your IT capabilities for a hybrid world.
✅ Step 2: What is an accountability model and what does yours look like
☑️ Step 3: What does your Operating model look like in this hybrid world.
☑️ Step 4: Bringing it all together.

Step 3: What does your operating model look like in this hybrid world?

Before we can answer this question, let’s ask ChatGPT what it thinks an operating model is in an IT world?

“An operating model is a framework that defines how an organization delivers and supports IT services to its users or customers. It includes the policies, processes, and procedures necessary to manage IT operations, and it outlines the roles, responsibilities, and relationships between different stakeholders in the organization.”

And why would you need one?

“The operating model is critical for ensuring that IT services are delivered efficiently, effectively, and consistently, and that they meet the needs and expectations of the organization’s stakeholders. It helps to align IT activities with business goals and objectives, optimize resource allocation, minimize risks, and ensure compliance with relevant regulations and standards.”

It speaks for itself, that every operating model is customer specific.

In creating such a specific operating model, we approach this in a pragmatic way. We believe it’s about interactions with different parts of the organization, about ownership and processes or capabilities. We aim to get all that into a one slide canvas showing the various parts that interact with each other. 

This is an example of such a customer specific canvas. We call this a canvas, because we literally use this to do a mapping of the capabilities. What you see is the outcome of a lot of discussions and workshops using sticky notes to map each capability. We find it is the most pragmatic way to represent the framework in which the hybrid organization will work.

Step 4: Bringing it all together.

Okay, so we have our capabilities defined, accountability model layed out and our operating model is on point. Now we have to bring it all together.

“Map your capabilities for a selected accountability model in your operating model”.

That’s the one sentence summary. At 45 Degrees we usually do this in a set of face-to-face workshops. We literally put the operating model canvas on the walls, we bring printed sticky notes with the customer specific capabilities and we make sure everybody in the room understands what accountability model we are mapping. 

It sounds like a herculean job, but when a correct “warm-up” has been done, it is surprisingly straight forward. The “warm-up” is all of the preparation work leading to these workshops.  

Epilogue: What’s next?

The next step is to refine your own capabilities and detail them further out to activity level.  After these 4 steps, capabilities are still at an abstraction level that is too high to simply define: who does what?

As an example, let us take “reference architectures” again. Reference Architecture work is done in a platform team, or CCoE or whatever you want to call it. But what reference architectures a specific company has or will have, that is when it all becomes real. Then you can decide who owns that reference architecture. And owning in a Cloud world means an ongoing commitment. The technology changes rapidly, so the owner of a specific reference architecture will need to make sure that new evolutions are incorporated.

So how will you start your Cloud adoption journey?

If you want to bounce off some ideas or get one of our experts to join in, we’re happy to guide!