1.6 Future state
Overview
A cloud future state identifies the vision and potential value that can be realized from the cloud solution. The cloud future state is derived from organizational assessments, external benchmarking, and cloud strategy. It represents a visual alignment of the organization culture, structure, people, technology, and process design to the new, cloud-centric ways of working.
The desired cloud future state informs your approach to transforming your people, skills, and organization. Some analysis techniques that can guide the definition of the future state are decision analysis, process analysis, business capability analysis, feature decomposition, prototyping, and product roadmapping. The future state is heavily dependent on, and should be aligned to, the cloud strategy.
Best practices
The future state should align with cloud strategy overall: What benefits will the cloud bring to the organization and to the people within it? What is the value that will be generated that was discussed in the strategy? These key insights from the strategy are part of the foundational building blocks that define the future state. Many companies benefit from identifying a network of change agents that represent a footprint of the impacted user base (functions, geographies, roles, and so on). A change agent is someone who is knowledgeable, authentic, and credible, and has influence within their network, even if they don't have formal authority.
Think about organizational alignment and establish an ongoing partnership between organizational structures, business operations, talent, and culture. The future will look different for every organization, but you can follow these three steps to help define your future state.
Step 1. Gather necessary information
| Culture | Structure | Processes |
|---|---|---|
How will people behave in the future state? |
How should the organization be organized? |
What processes are key to the organization's vision? |
What will they believe is important? |
How much management should there be? |
How will those processes operate? |
What kind of rules will the organization have? |
Where should management be placed? |
How will they be measured? |
How will the organization determine that the processes are working correctly? |
Step 2. Define resource requirements
-
How much time is needed (per resource)?
-
How much money will be spent?
-
What personnel will be involved in the change?
-
What training will be in place?
Step 3. Identify change agents
-
Who are the primary change agents involved?
-
Are the primary change agents aware of their responsibilities?
After you gather this data, consider doing an analysis of how your organization and business processes are organized today and how you would like to see them designed in the future. This activity should be led jointly by the OCA team and the cloud or transformation program team.
Finally, when modeling the future state, consider describing changes to the following components of the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) People Perspective:
-
Culture evolution: Evaluate, incrementally evolve, and codify organizational culture with digital transformation aspirations.
-
Transformational leadership: Strengthen leadership capability and mobilize leaders to drive transformational change.
-
Cloud fluency: Build digital acumen to confidently and effectively leverage the cloud to accelerate business outcomes.
-
Workforce transformation: Enable talent and modernize roles to attract, develop, and retain a digitally fluent and high-performing workforce.
-
Change acceleration: Accelerate the adoption of the new ways of working by applying a programmatic change acceleration framework.
-
Organization design: Assess and evolve organizational design for alignment with the new cloud ways of working.
-
Organizational alignment: Establish ongoing partnerships between organizational structures, business operations, talent, and culture.
FAQ
Q. Who should be involved in this activity?
A. Executive sponsors, project or program leader, change leader, internal service providers (for example, communications, training/learning, and human resources, if they have a role in supporting the change initiative).
Q. What are the inputs to this activity?
A. Business case, discovery phase outputs (MRA and MRP), interviews with executive sponsor and human resources, staffing model, culture assessments, cloud strategy, and business value realization plans.
Q. What are the outputs of this activity?
A. High-level future state organizational model and high-level description of roles and responsibilities.
Q. Why should time be spent on this activity?
A. Investing time to define the desired cloud future state helps align the organization on the destination for the cloud journey.
Q. When do you use it?
A. Use a future state approach to intentionally change the way your company works, and determine how people empower the business strategy. This might result in drastic changes such as outsourcing, insourcing, or hiring a managed service to deliver aspects of your business. To make these types of decisions around the future state, be sure to involve participants who have diverse experiences from different professions to encourage innovation in the solution space.
Additional steps
To start mobilizing the team and defining the future state:
-
Review the business case.
-
Review discovery phase outputs.
-
Review the cloud strategy and business value realization plans.
-
Analyze input from interviews with the executive sponsor, HR, and other stakeholders.
-
Participate in operational model design sessions.
-
Review staffing models.
-
Review any cultural assessments.
-
Facilitate creation of the future structure at a high level and ensure buy-in from key stakeholders.
-
Work with executive leadership to assess current leadership and determine the key leaders of the future organizational structure.
-
Review future state and business requirements.
