Key Activity 4: Design for effective communications and engagement
With a stakeholder map in hand, you are ready to establish an effective com-
munications and engagement strategy to move leaders and teams to build sus-
tained commitment to the new cloud vision. A cloud transformation plan needs
to define and track engagement to address key content and timings. The tacti-
cal matters, such as engagement owners, mediums and measuring success
metrics, all need definition.
Establish guiding principles to drive the change engagement. For example, the
transformation adopters must own the cloud design, build and run phases. If
they don’t, then you own the risk of building the wrong people, process and
technology solution. To further help drive commitments, make certain that:
• Success is measured in business outcomes, not just deliverables — busi-
ness value must result from the cloud implementation, the sooner the
better
• Information flows two ways and is open and honest — a dialogue to pro-
vide feedback is established and acted on
• Roles and responsibilities are clear — when people know what is
expected of them, they can deliver results and respect accountability
Key Activity 5: Understand the re-skilling, education and training implications
One of the cloud’s dirty little secrets, often not discussed, is that the newfound
automation in these hyperscale platforms can render a significant portion of
the operational staff unnecessary. While certain job functions may be auto-
mated out of existence, the people in these functions still have great value to
the enterprise. This is where the importance of re-skilling, education and
training comes into play.
Such efforts entail a range of formal and informal activities aimed at building
cloud knowledge, skill and experience. You want your training program to con-
struct a bridge from the traditional operating world to the new cloud centric
world. Your people training dollars demonstrates your company’s commitment
to its employees. It also enables the evolution of valuable competencies and
services.
A unified cloud learning plan augments existing in-house expertise and devel-
opment capabilities with vendor provided materials. In addition, it creates
learning communities and networks comprised of early adopters. A typical
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