An Insurance Company Assigns
the Right Resources and Priori-
tizes for Success
Overview
We worked with a Fortune 500 insurance company to
develop a plan to get started on AWS. The company
chose to move cautiously to avoid the mistakes its
peers made jumping into cloud too fast without
assigned processes and team. It engaged CTP on sev-
eral fronts: 1) to complete a Cloud Transformation
Maturity Assessment to assess baseline maturity, set
a strategic roadmap to improve it and identify chal-
lenges and blockers to cloud adoption; 2) to create a
CBO to establish a baseline of resources; and 3) to
draw up a roadmap for future work.
Challenges
The insurance company did a good job of identifying
challenges and understanding their own areas of
weakness based on the up-front assessment. It
approached the project in a flexible, cooperative
manner and was realistic about what could be accom-
88 | THE DOPPLER | FALL 2018
plished. When the maturity assessment revealed low
readiness scores across all ten categories, the cus-
tomer did not try to catch up all at once. It agreed to
focus on three categories to mature: 1) Security/
Risk/Compliance; 2) Process/Operation/Model; 3)
Communications/Culture. While maturing these
three categories, CTP also kicked off an application
assessment and started building out their cloud foun-
dational services using the Minimum Viable Cloud
(MVC) methodology. Doing these activities in parallel,
the CBO created new and updated operating pro-
cesses and models for operating on AWS. As the MVC
was being built, the CBO was developing and putting
in place the new operational processes that were
needed.
The customer also assigned leaders to the three cat-
egories they focused on and gave them time to devote
to their new tasks. These three leaders gathered up
feedback and reported to a designated, full-time CBO
leader. The CBO leader served as a champion who
reported into an assistant to the CIO. This person had
the responsibility, visibility and accountability for the
cloud transformation program.