Streamline your quality assurance process with Digital transformation in sales for Quality Assurance

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there are a number of key steps and sequences of activities that need to happen in any sort of successful digital transformation but what exactly are the steps that you should take that's what I want to talk about here today [Music] my name is Eric Kimberling I'm the CEO of third stage Consulting we're an independent consulting firm that helps clients throughout the world to reach their third stage of digital transformation success and in order to be successful in any sort of digital transformation there's a number of key work streams and Key activities that need to happen and they need to happen in a certain order and sequence throughout a transformation so what I want to do today is talk about what those steps and major phases of a project are and also at the end of this video I'm going to talk about the most important activities which are actually activities that run in parallel with the major steps in the process so be sure to stay tuned to the end to hear that section and by the way a lot of this information I'm going to cover here in today's video is something you can find in our digital transformation report it's an annual report that we publish each year that highlights a number of best practices related to digital Transformations and software implementations and it also includes a number of independent reviews and rankings of different types of technology that might help enable your digital transformation so I encourage you to check that out I've included links to that below now although I'm going to talk about these different steps today in sequential order there's also a movement in the digital transformation space that's moving more towards an agile project-based approach and what agile is is essentially removing the sequential nature of some of these activities and putting them more in parallel so you're able to deploy technology and get value faster out of the technology some organizations however will still go through more of a sequential step-by-step others will do more the parallel agile approach but whatever approach you're taking even if it's agile these are the major steps and sequences that need to happen in any sort of digital transformation [Music] the first step in any successful digital transformation is the technology evaluation and even though it's a first step it's actually a pretty robust and complex First Step the reason for that is because there's a lot of different Technologies available in the marketplace you have Erp systems which are enterprise-wide enterprise resource planning systems you have CRM or sales automation types of Technologies you have HCM or HR types of Technologies Supply Chain management Technologies best to breed business intelligence all these different solutions that organizations can be using but obviously they're not going to use them all so this technology evaluation step in the process is really important and in our digital transformation report that I mentioned a moment ago you can find more details of how to go about the software evaluation process but I'll summarize it here in the meantime one of the key foundational aspects of a technology evaluation is defining what your business requirements are so what is it that you want to be able to do as a business in this future State and not only are you identifying what those business requirements are but you're also prioritizing those business requirements and then the other most important step in the tech evaluation phase of the project is to identify what potential systems you should be evaluating now with dozens if not hundreds of different Enterprise Technologies available in the marketplace it's not feasible that you're going to get a full evaluation of all those different Technologies nor should you because many of those systems just aren't going to be a good fit for your organization so the key here is to identify to find a short list of Technologies and do a deep dive into those short list of Technologies and for more tips on how to get there how to get to that short list and how to streamline your Tech evaluation process I've included in my YouTube channel other videos that talk about the software evaluation process in more detail so I encourage you to check that out as well now once we've evaluated and selected the best technology or Technologies for our organization the next step is to start designing that software so in other words we take our business requirements that we defined during the evaluation phase and we build on those requirements to Define further definition of what our business processes will look like what the more detailed business processes will look like and ultimately that acts as a sort of blueprint for the design of Technology now here's where we're really Bridging the Gap between business needs and Technology needs so in the design phase the technologists or the technical implementers will take those business requirements and translate them into technology requirements into meaningful technical specifications that they can then use to configure and maybe even customize or develop the software in a way that's going to best support the business now typically at the end of the design phase you're going to have a milestone or a sign off point where the technical implementer or the technologist will ask the business to sign off on the requirements and the technical specifications that have been defined and so that's an important Milestone you want to make sure that you get that sign off and that you're all on the same page and you have approval before you move into the build phase so once we have alignment on the design of the technology now we start building it and this is where the technical implementer will do the wrench turning they'll do the configuration the customization anything they need to do to actually build that software and to really turn it into something that's workable and that meets the business and Technical requirements that have already been defined now this is actually a fairly complex process especially if you're evaluating enterprise-wide Technologies or technology that impact multiple functions and diverse parts of the business because now we need to configure the system and make sure we understand not only how steps work within the system but how each of those steps affect and impact other parts of the system so we're building but we're not just building individual building blocks we've got to put it all together into a workable solution from end-to-end business processes so this build phase is very important and this is where the technical competencies become most important and this is arguably the most technical part of the entire implementation [Music] now once we've built the software then we need to test it and there's actually multiple iterations of testing the first two iterations are more technically focused and the third one that I'll mention is more business focused so the two technically focused iterations of testing are first the unit testing as it's commonly called and unit or software testing is basically just confirming that the way the software was built or meant to be built actually The Works the way that it should so we're looking at a specific transactional workflow and one tiny segment of an end-to-end business process and making sure that that workflow works the way it needs to from a technical perspective once we've tested and validated that each of these individual building blocks of the process are working appropriately then we have to look at integration testing so this is where we look more to the end-to-end business processes to make sure that all these different pieces tie together and flow together and integrate together throughout the process and this is also where we test the integration points to other systems so if we have multiple systems we're deploying the integration test phase is where we'll make sure that data is Flowing the way it should in between different systems or maybe even just different modules within the same system but the end result is that we're making sure that we're testing the entire end-to-end cycle now the third iteration actually has multiple iterations on its own and that iteration is called user acceptance testing or sometimes it's referred to as conference room pilots and this is where the business gets involved in the the testing process and the business is not just testing to make sure the technology works because presumably that step is already being completed by the technologists in the first two testing phases that I talked about but instead they're looking at does this work for the business so in other words we know that the software Works technically but does it work in a line with what the business needs are so this is a great opportunity to validate that the business requirements are being met to identify exceptions or workarounds or things that might break the process the way it's designed right now and it's really a way to also gain ownership and buy-in into the process and get the business involved so this isn't just an I.T project we have the business involved in the testing as well so throughout all three phases of testing one thing that's really important to have in terms of deliverables our test scripts so these are scenarios that are laid out common business scenarios end-to-end business processes and workflows that people can follow during the testing process and document what's actually happening so we're going step by step much like a training manual and we're identifying and documenting how the process works what the inputs are what the outputs were what the end result was where any issues or deficiencies are in the process and that's a way to capture issues and potential problems in the testing cycle so that the developers can go back and fix whatever it is they need to fix and then you go through the testing cycle again to confirm that it works then so that's why you have multiple iterations of testing not just on the technical side but perhaps more importantly on the business user acceptance testing side you want to have multiple iterations so you have plenty of time to capture and address some of those issues that are inevitably identified in most if not all user acceptance testing [Music] now the next step in the process is go live this is where we flip the switch and we go live we start using the new technology and this is really important for a number of reasons one is because this is the culmination of all the work that's been done throughout the entire digital transformation but secondly this is where we learn whether or not our efforts have been successful and if we're successful then great we can go on our merry way but if things aren't successful that creates a lot of problems which is what a lot of organizations struggle with and that's quite frankly why so many organizations fail in their digital transformation efforts is because they didn't do one of the earlier steps well or they didn't do it thoroughly enough to where when they go live they run into material operational disruptions so it's really important that as part of our go live or leading into our go live process that we have a clear and definitive go no-go decision and this is where you look at everything that's been completed in the project everything that's incomplete as well as all the risks in the project so we have to make a qualitative decision based on qualitative information to understand what our risk profile is to go live at this moment in time or 30 days from now or whatever the date is that we've defined as our potential go live so that go no-go decision is really important and you want to make sure you get that right and understand what the risks are of going live because every go live has risks once we go live either across the entire company or just for certain processes or different locations within the organization our job now is to provide go live support and this is where typically it'll ramp up support to make sure that there's people involved in the digital transformation project that are out on the shop floor they're out in the field supporting people people that are going to be using the technology day to day and keep in mind that at this point this is where the rubber meets the road because up until now the project itself has been isolated to a relatively small group of people within the organization the project core team the subject matter experts the change management team people that were involved in deploying the technology but when you go live you're cascading that technology throughout the entire organization which is why there's so much risk there so this is where the team typically shifts its focus from designing and building stuff to now supporting the actual operations going forward now the last major sequential activity within a digital transformation is post go live support so this is where we provide ongoing support to the operations to the employees to the front line users of the technology to ensure that we're not only solving problems and helping them through the inevitable hiccups that happen during a transformation but there were also remediating problems providing ongoing training and support helping people get used to and comfortable with the new processes and the new technology a lot of times software vendors and system integrators will refer to this phase as hyper care and that hyper care I'm not sure where that name came from but that's meant to provide go live support and ensure that we stabilize operations that we at the very least get back to our level of productivity before we turn on the new technology but more importantly we need to provide enough post school life support that we actually maximize the ROI and the results from the technology so that we're actually performing better than we were before the go live and again this is why so many organizations are underwhelmed by their digital transformation projects is because they don't spend enough time after go live to optimize and make sure they're getting the full business value out of what they just spent all this time and money deploying [Music] so far I've talked about some sequential activities that happen throughout a project unless you're in an agile environment of course you might blend or blur together some of these sequential activities or consolidate them into smaller phases but in general it's been a sequential series of activities but in addition to that there's also some parallel work streams that are arguably even more important than anything I've talked about so far and these are activities that span across the multiple steps and sequences in the process and provide value throughout the project the first is organizational change management we need to be working on organizational change management throughout the entire project that includes everything from defining what the organization is going to look like assessing organizational Readiness identifying what the change impacts are to the organization training Communications all that stuff is wrapped into the organizational change management bucket and for more information about change management you can also download my guided to organizational change management if you look at the links below I've included a link to that and it's a great way way to unpack change management and understand what that is in more detail another parallel work stream is process Improvement so along the way we need to be defining what our future State operating model and future State business processes are going to be and we also want to identify what our business process improvements are going to be and we need to be deploying those process improvements a lot of people think that just by deploying technology you've improved your process but really all you've done is provided a tool to potentially improve your process we need to roll out that process and change our process to fit the technology so that we're aligned and we actually get the value we expect to get and then there's architecture and data so anything to do with architecture which essentially relates to multiple systems and how they integrate how they tie together and how data flows throughout the systems is a really important work stream and if you think about it one of the biggest Assets in a digital transformation is the data and the results and the outputs you get from the technology and if you don't have good data you don't have good architecture and integration you're not going to be able to achieve that goal and finally you have quality assurance quality assurance is really a program management sort of a risk mitigation tool that's meant to ensure that the project is not only completing the steps in the process that I've described but you're completing the steps in the process in a way that meets quality standards and Industry standards for digital Transformations and more importantly you're making sure that the steps and the sequences that I've talked about result in an output that aligns with what it is you expected to get out of the technology and for more information about what quality assurance is I actually have a quality assurance framework that I'll share with you and I've included a visual of it here in front of you but you can also download this framework with the links below along with the other materials that I've described so far so these are the major steps in a digital transformation they're also the major parallel work streams that need to happen to ensure that your digital transformation is successful and I encourage you to download our digital transformation report which includes a number of best practices Lessons Learned and Technology evaluations and reviews to help you with your digital transformation I've also included a number of other resources below including some of the resources I've already mentioned in this video as well as others so be sure to check the description field below for links to those resources so I hope you found this information useful and hope you have a great day [Music] and even though it's the first step it's an actual so in other words how do those business requirements translate into into what into meaningful something so we're designing once we've defined testing actually has its own