Demystifying Enterprise Innovation

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Useful Resources mentioned in the Podcast

Concepts & Ideas

Innovation Labs
Innovation Center (IC)
Citizen Development Governance
Fusion Teams
End-to-end automation
Testing, staging, and production

Tools & Resources

Citizen Development, The Handbook for Creators and Change Makers

Apps

Master Process App
Credit Card Request Process

Key Takeaways

Hans Hantson Intro 00:00—05:03

Role of Hans at AgilePoint
Low Code Event in Utrecht Hotel in the Netherlands.

Innovation Managers & Citizen Development 05:04—12:33

Demand for quick turnaround off app ideas.
Exploring how LCNC platforms can help in ideation and execution
Independence to fail and pivot

Misunderstanding about Low Code No Code 13:09—21:55

Evaluating Low Code No Code Platforms
A platform to glue it together

PMI Handbook and Customer Inspirations 22:55—37:04

Citizen Development, The Handbook for Creators and Change Makers
Fusion Teams
Testing, staging, or production environments in LCNC platforms
Release management, risk management, and change management
Inspiration from customers

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Key Takeaways
Process Improvement & Matt Hubbard's Intro 00:00—06:06

“Never automate a crappy process, unless it’s your goal to produce crap faster.”
It can be tempting to jump straight to the tech without first considering the process.
Matt's Background (03:09)
If the process and technology aren’t harmonized to support each other, the results can be poor
I Love Lucy: Chocolate Factory (Example) (04:03)

Citizen Development 07:05—08:27

TrackVia is a platform for building apps.
Using an LCNC platform at scale can be a competitive advantage, but it must be approached in a wise fashion
The Citizen Development framework and best practices allow customers to grow with LCNC safely and effectively
Citizen Development is like a box of Legos

Matt's Citizen Development Journey 09:32—19:30

Matt's problem-solving nature
The failed software project
Matt's first experience with LCNC

Citizen Development at Scale 21:37—34:18

How to move from enjoying pockets of success to creating sustainable cultures of CD innovation?
“Dabbling is easy, scaling is hard” – Dave Garrett, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, PMI (22:11)
Hired by TrackVia to bring process excellence and CD to our customers
Started to design my own CD program for operating at a scale
Discovered PMI’s CD framework and went all-in with PMI (25:17)
PMI's Maturity Model of Citizen Development (32:01)

Advice to Get Started with Citizen Development 35:08—42:17

Advice for those who want to start a CD program at their company (35:58)
Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast (37:03)
Begin with “Discovery”
Don’t overthink it --- do it, experiment, learn
My approach with my CD students (40:10)

Quotes

So I often preach, never automate a crappy process unless it's your goal to produce crap faster.As Benjamin Franklin said, Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.It's important to think through processes before flipping the automation switch. Citizen Developers are, they are problem solvers. If you are one who is okay with the way things are today, you like coming in, doing your job, checking the box, and going home, then I would probably say Citizen Development is not for you.I thought, why can't we do that with business applications? Why can't we have a platform that already exists, like the home console for Atari?Process problems and system problems are kind of ubiquitous. They kind of exist at every company. And, this app-building platform, which would later be categorized as low code, no code was back in play. And to make a long story short, I started learning the platform and building my own apps. I'm not a coder; I'm a process person. I think one of the reasons why it didn't scale for me is that I didn't approach Citizen Development in partnership with IT and executive leaders. I have a mantra that I followed when I ran my consulting business and I adhere to it today, and it's called Think Big, Start Small Scale Fast.

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Key Takeaways
[0:00] Microsoft Power Platform’s governance is all about putting the guardrails around the low code platform so that the citizens can keep on developing apps to solve their own problems, deliver a good user experience, and allow them to innovate without locking their activities with IT policies.

[7:40] Low-code products like Power Platform aim to fuel a bottom-up innovation.
[8:06] There’s a lot of hype around low-code no-code platforms but a lot of companies don’t understand how they can use these platforms in their environment.

[11:50] Jukka and his team of consultants often find individuals or teams using Microsoft Power Platform to build solutions, especially those who were not able to get them built through their IT departments. These are not necessarily the most beautiful apps from a UI or architecture perspective, but very effective from the business results perspective.

[13:20] You need to find those heroes within the organization who already understand that there’s a business need for low-code platforms. These are the folks who are frustrated by the lack of official systems or how long it takes to build them.

[14:40] Power Platform is better than just using the Power Apps because through the platform you can enforce policies and processes to govern several types of solutions and apps.

[16:15] What people generally misunderstand about Power Platform is its commercial plan and positioning of it because Microsoft has bundled Power Apps, Power Automate, and Flow into Office 365 from day one.

[19:27] The big question is whether Power Platform will also be for vendors to build their own products on top of it. Until now what Microsoft has mostly celebrated is Citizen Developers. Jukka and his team have also built their own product on top of the Power Platform, and they call it the ‘Sustainability Action Pack’.

[27:25] Microsoft Power Platform charges users based on license-per-user so you have to assess which use cases it is most suitable for. It might be fit for some use cases but not the right toolkit for consumer-facing apps and scenarios.

[28:20] Power Platform’s future direction can be assessed by seeing how it evolved during the past four years. In the first two years, the focus was still on catering to app makers’ needs, integrating capabilities of Dynamics CRM and Dataverse. During the past two years, the focus was still a lot on admin tools and governance capabilities of the platform.

[32:00] The way we frame Power Platform governance to our customers is that you need policies, controls, and processes for people who are not pro-developers, do not do it for a living, and who don’t have a formal education background in software development. Allow them to use pieces from the cloud in a sensible way.

[34:00] Internal evangelism is important to make LCNC initiatives successful.

[45:00] CRM consultants have done a lot of good work in evangelizing CRMs in organizations, so that type of effort is needed to make Low Code No Code more acceptable.

Quotes
“The way we frame Power Platform’s governance to our customers is that it's all about putting the guardrails all-around low code platforms”.

“We are really more focused on helping the organizations themselves take ownership of their tools and build new applications for scenarios that previously haven't had any apps or automation in place”.

“From an IT perspective, the power platform is unique in the sense that many organizations already have it, even though they haven't acquired it. And that's the result of the Microsoft strategy to bundle it with their Office and Dynamics tools”.

“Users of Low Code tools are people who have usually been frustrated by the lack of official systems or how long it takes to get something budgeted and implemented”.

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Note: Based on the title of this podcast, if you want to directly listen to Ian Duncan's take on 'Why Transformations fail?' and a meta-framework he uses to approach transformation program management, head over to this timestamp [00:26— 00:51].

If you prefer to understand the nuances involved in large-scale transformation programs, it's best to listen to the whole episode.

Episode Summary

Why do people resist change in large restructuring or transformation programs? Joining FTI Consulting and what keeps Ian energized, having a personal connection with customers, who inspired him the most, and his take on servant leaders. [00:00— 11:00]
- Some people resist change because they don't see where they belong in the outcome of that change process. [00:00]
- Your job is to, is to actually look at the detractors and understand why are they behaving the way they're behaving? [00:42]
- Who is Ian Duncan and what’s the significance of his work at FTI Consulting? [01:17]
- Which verticals does Ian have the most experience in and who inspires him? [05:22]
- Servant leaders and how they guard their time. [10:22]
Where does the buck stop in a transformation program, which ability serves the CEOs the most; why people become protection-driven; how charismatic CEO overcome that challenge in their workforce and ‘Net-Promotor’ view to detect and circumvent people who become roadblocks in a digital transformation program. [11:59— 20:44]
- Where does the buck stop in a transformation program? [11:59]
- How to spot detractors (what FTI calls people roadblocks) in a transformation or restructuring program? [15:32]
- Managing vendors and the key to keeping a transformation program on track [17:33]
- What does Ian notice about construction industry projects? [19:13]
- ‘Commitment-based’ framework to manage large-scale transformation programs that have billion-dollar+ in budgets. [20:44]
Why transformation programs fail, the untold truth about large-scale programs; FTI Consulting’s Resilience Barometer Report. [00:26— 00:51]
- Why transformation programs fail, engagement with PMI (Project Management Institute) in developing an industry-agnostic Citizen Development Canvas, and Digital Office in the construction industry. [26:00]
- Untold truths about large-scale transformation programs, the importance of acknowledging mistakes, and avoiding window dressing of failed programs, what’s Ian most interested in learning about? 34:00
- Resilience Barometer report by FTI Consulting, the importance of the report for people responsible for driving change in large organizations, and what’s the Buddy program at FTI Consulting? 42:00
- Sign-off 00:51

List of Resources Discussed in the Podcast

Why Transformations Fail? Time to Reexamine Conventional Wisdom
Resilience Barometer Report September 2021

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List of topics/themes discussed in the episode

Why do you need to tackle the 'unsexy' stuff of enterprise digitalization as a precursor to AI; why does scalability matter more than scale in RPA projects; about Lasse Rindom, and coming up with an organization-wide framework for decentralized management of RPA projects? [00:00-00:18]
- Proof-of-Concept vs. Proof of Value — 0:15
- Lasse's year-end satirical predictions about the enterprise software world on his LinkedIn Profile — 2:35
- Coming up with an organization-wide framework for decentralized management of RPA projects — 4:30
- Bad/cliché questions RPA vendors/consultants ask when starting to come up with an RPA solution. — 10:50
- How to adopt Low-Code/No-Code apps and even RPA from the SIPOC lens (where LCNC resides in 'I' or Input part of data flow and RPA resides in 'P' or process part of data flow — 14:20
- Language gap between IT and business — 18:10
Lasse's background education as a history major, evolution vs. revolution, the danger of posing complex problems as simple, shoemaker's kids have worn-out shoes, and why LCNC makes sense (17:42 — 00:39)
- Lasse's interesting background as Masters of History and did it help take a more holistic approach to his field of work? 17:42
- Why does Lasse believe in evolution instead of revolutions? — 21:40
- What did a history lesson about witches tell Lasse about the importance of being able to acknowledge different world views? — 25:35
- Why complex problems should not be posed as simple and the danger of doing so (Brexit as an example)? — 28:50
- Why does it make so much sense to have more Low-Code/No-Code apps? — 00:38
- Baker Tilly Digital — 00:39
SMV.Digital grants program, a valuable 'licensing model' Lasse carved out to globally implement RPA capabilities in ISS A/S, and his year-end predictions [00:44—01:09]
- What is SMV Digital program for the Danish businesses that can apply for a grant of DKK 25,000? — 00:44
- An interesting 'licensing model' for enterprise-grade RPA projects — 00:53
- Lasse's predictions that he shared on his LinkedIn profile, we discuss two of them; EU Low-Law and the definition of Citizen Developer (CD), and RPA gets to scale, finally. — 00:59
- The Low-Code/No-Code pitch, where does it fit into an organization's data flow? 01:07
- Sign-off — 01:09

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List of topics/themes discussed in the episode

Introduction 0:00
- The concept behind Digital Transformation debt
- The real-world impact of digital transformation debt
  Importance of balancing do-it-quick style innovation with governance
- Who is the audience for his book?
What’s the drawback of postponing digital transformation and accumulating debt? 15:45
- Driving a cart with square wheels
- Examples where low-code innovation makes the most sense
- Which leadership style is more suitable to drive change in an agile way?
How do enterprise leaders make low-code/no-code projects become a success story throughout the company? 24:20
- Role of Center of Excellence in alleviating digital transformation debt
- Who leads the center of excellence, business, or IT?
Parting message to enterprise leaders 43:30
- What did Dr. Setrag have to say to executives who want to innovate faster without wasting time and money?

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