System Transformation Portal

Drafting Transition Strategy
While use of the participative design process enrolled participants in the creation of the new IT infrastructure, the culture of an information enterprise is unlikely to shift overnight. To streamline the transition to the new IT infrastructure, the new governance structure may be phased in. The following steps can be used as a baseline for creating a phased organizational transition strategy.

1. Create a communication and feedback strategy that allows for adjusting the process as needed.
2. Support the process with facilitation skills, particularly where conflicts may arise.
3. Prioritize the hub structure creation and deployment process based on the existing and planned information management infrastructure.
4. Organize administration and finance hub structures, particularly those that focus on budget and human resource issues.
5. Enlist human resource skills to support the shift of personnel during this process.
6. Establish and stabilize the environmental.
7. Organize hub structures providing infrastructure support especially to the architecture team, project office and internal consulting hubs.
8. Focus on the creation of core hub teams before placing individuals from these teams into specific business units (e.g. deploy central network management prior to deploying distributed network management).
9. Depending on the existing application support structure, organize business systems management hubs across business units.
10. Establish core supplier / customer hub prior to deploying remote and external supplier / customer hubs.
11. Based on the new hub structures, ensure that centralized hubs have leadership representation at the next innermost hub.
12. Based on feedback adjust this process as needed
13. Disband design teams as each hub materializes.
14. Make sure that the transition plan reflects key dependencies and input from all major IT functional hubs.

Deploying Transition Strategy
The above guidelines are a starting point for a transition plan. The transition approach depends on the current organization structure and the people involved. The cultural shift will vary from enterprise to enterprise and from business unit to business unit.

1. The design team may have to revisit a given business unit a number of times to fully deploy the hub concept.
2. Certain business unit executives may also try to stall deployment, which is why CEO and board level support for this initiative is so critical.
3. Establishing periodic checkpoints to assess progress will allow you to adjust transition and facilitation techniques along the way.
4. The design team should project the timing of the transition process in a plan that coincides with each of the 15 transition guidelines listed above.
5. Realistic expectations should be set forth at the outset. And, most importantly, everyone should be kept informed of progress along the way.
6. Corporate propaganda should be eliminated from the communication process.

Setting Success Criteria
The following success criteria may be used as a starting point for determining how well the transition process is proceeding.

1. Customer and supplier satisfaction has increased.
2. The number of suppliers has been reduced.
3. Data accessibility and compatibility for and among business units, e-business initiatives and external entities has been simplified.
4. Network integration has improved while downtime has decreased.
5. Vendor relationships have been streamlined and improved.
6. The cost of managing the information infrastructure has been reduced.
7. People can articulate your e-business strategy.
8. IT self-organizes to deal with business changes or other issues without having to reorganize.
9. Hostilities between the technology and business community have melted.
10. People are generally happier with their roles and responsibilities.