When embarking on a Digital Transformation (DX) project, you would expect a few risk items to be on your radar, but only with actual experience of DX projects does it prepare you for the reality and true extent of the challenges you expect to experience.

The business as usual (BAU) team play a pivotal part of any Digital Transformation (DX) project. Not only do they keep the wheels turning whilst your company embarks on a digital upgrade, but also continue business essential projects whilst DX takes place. The person creating the DX Test Strategy must understand the ongoing goals of the BAU projects and be acutely aware of what is happening and when; this is to ensure and to allow the appropriate approach to be taken to capture changes to core and downstream applications before they are migrated to the new platform. Additionally, detailing the level of risk required to deliver the project to quality, time and cost should also be considered and mitigated.

I love solving problems. In fact, I like to consider myself to be a natural problem solver. It’s just how my brain works; I see an issue and instantly my mind switches into problem solving mode. And in IT, there are always problems to be solved.

So, let’s get this blog post rolling with a nice sterile quote from the internet to outline the what:

I often find many of the high-level risks have repeated themselves on the projects I’ve worked on. However, the risk profile, risk appetite, detail of the risk, how it gets managed, mitigated and controlled varies massively.

Digital Transformation, is in my view, a lot like the ocean’s tide. When on a sailing yacht, you have a few choices when it comes to dealing with tides, but deal with them you must.

At the heart of every Digital Transformation project or programme lays digital assurance, and within that quality assurance function hosts a team of able testers, but there’s always a fear that digital transformation will prevent businesses from fully committing to the process due to lack of resources being available. Most companies undertaking this exercise will set up a dedicated team to deliver the digital transformation allowing existing staff to continue with business as usual. Organisations can set up a test team and associate processes to accelerate digital transformation without any significant impact to existing projects by following key steps.

What is Governance?
For the purpose of this blog post, governance is considered as the mechanism of control within an organisation or team. When done right, it should accurately represent the business, it’s people, it’s attitude to risk and the regulatory environment in which it operates.

It’s possible to keep your stakeholders happy, even if quality is not great, simply by managing their expectations from start to finish.

For a number of years, I was responsible for converting a large number of, mostly manual, processes into an automated ticket logging system for a major UK company. Many of these processes passed through a number of teams on their road to completion, and they ranged from routine tasks like creating a new user account to the more complex process of getting new software approved for purchase and installation.