Pattern: Business Case
Before launching a cloud native transformation, an enterprise’s leadership must makesure the initiative is needed and that the benefits will justify the investment
A company is experiencing pressure, whether from the market or internally, to moveto cloud native. The executive team is contemplating making the move to cloudnative, but there is little internal knowledge of cloud native tech and culture orunderstanding of its benefits.
In This Context
Cloud native transformations are a big commitment, requiring significant investment of budget, time, and team talent. Too many organizations, though, get caught up in the hype of the cloud conversation and make decisions without understanding how exactly a transformation fits their business needs and goals.The risk is especially high for organizations that have already established rapid and significant internal momentum toward making this move.
- The traditional model is for organizations to be massively risk-averse to minimize uncertainty at all costs.
- Change-averse culture avoids new technologies or experimental approaches.Cloud native architectures are conceptually different from traditional approaches, merging careful upfront planning with flexible and mutable,experimentation-based implementation.
- Tech teams are eager to get started with the transformation, even before a business case is established.
- Cloud native is complex, and the benefits are not easily visible.
- Companies often don’t have good baselines for how much it actually costs them to do development in their current approach, so trying to evaluate cost savings or time savings in a new approach is difficult.
Therefore
Create a formal business case to help educate the organization’s executive team, to evaluate how the transformation will serve the company’s goals, and to create a clear vision for where the organization is headed.
- Discussion should involve business stakeholders, as well as information gathering interviews with internal and external resources.
- Explain key cloud native advantages, including acceleration of business velocity,resilience, scalability, potential cost savings, and the ability to quickly act on feedback from customers to improve products.
- Evaluate the realistic scope and cost of the transformation, including technical and organizational changes.
Consequently
The business case for a cloud native transformation is clear. The company’s decision makers have a clear understanding of the initiative and the advantages it willconfer when complete. They are ready to move forward.
- They are prepared to allocate the necessary budget and resources that such a large project will require.
- Enhanced recruitment and retention of tech staff eager to work with modern systems.
