No business initiative is without its challenges, and where digital transformation is concerned, there are many. Even with an API-first approach, you will inevitably encounter barriers. By understanding those barriers, you can formulate a strategic plan to overcome them.
Legacy systems
Legacy represents one of the first, most significant challenges for an established enterprise. Perhaps your organisation has a system that’s been in place for a decade. It works well enough for its specific use case. But, unfortunately, it’s ill-equipped to interface with modern technology such as the cloud. In other words, it’s an impediment to your digital transformation initiative, which ultimately leaves you with two choices:
- Tearing the existing system down and starting over.
- Modernising the system so that it no longer holds back digital transformation.
Regardless of their choice, many businesses fall victim to overambition when addressing legacy. They start with massive, sweeping changes, failing to realise that even laying the groundwork may take years. By then, their infrastructure is once more outdated, and the process begins again. Digital transformation must be strategic and deliberate, but to avoid this pitfall, it must also happen as quickly as possible.
“When you are creating a transformation strategy for your organisation, culture is often the biggest challenge, especially in well-established organisations with many long-term employees.”
Michael Marschean CIO SubCom Learn more about Michael →
“Code updates and big fixes implemented by constantly changing development teams can leave security holes in design. The API-first approach addresses this problem by reducing the overhead of code base management.”
Siddharth Katare Senior Solution Architect HCL Technologies Learn more about Siddharth →
Talent acquisition
Having the right people in the right positions makes all the difference for your digital transformation journey. As such, the importance of personnel in both strategic initiatives and overall company culture cannot be understated. You may be modernising your technology, but your people are the pillars of your journey. Whether you opt for lateral hires, internal training or recruitment, answer the following questions:
- What expertise is necessary to implement the digital transformation plan?
- Does your current staff have the required skills?
- What will be essential for maintenance in the future?
- Can you provide training to your existing staff?
- Will you need to hire?
- What roles will you need to fill?
- What is the current state of your hiring pool?
- Do you need to update your onboarding process?
- How will you ensure that new hires are a cultural fit for the business?
Empowerment
For a successful API-first approach, responsibility and accountability must be baked into your business processes. Your employees must understand both their roles and the importance of those roles in the wider organisation. More importantly, they should have the autonomy and independence to fulfil their responsibilities in the way they feel is best. “Employers must develop a culture that reinforces the important role each employee plays in their organisation,” writes Natalie Baumgartner in Harvard Business Review. “Encourage employees to examine or reconsider how their role ties back to the greater organisation, but remember that it’s the company’s responsibility to make this connection crystal clear.” One way to enable this empowerment involves employee reviews. By building layers of review into a central hierarchy and leveraging automation to promote continuous improvement, you’ll both enable your people and improve business operations. Empowered employees still make mistakes, but they use those mistakes to learn, correct and do better.
Distributed culture
Distributed work and digital transformation go hand-in-hand — and the former isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Nor should it. Moving forward, the most successful businesses will be those that seamlessly blend in-person and remote work into a hybrid environment. Per Accenture, for instance, 63% of high-revenue growth companies have embraced hybrid work, and 69% of businesses with negative or no growth reject it. A distributed structure and remote-friendly culture only work with full, business-wide buy-in. A single team or department alone cannot drive change. The good news is that most businesses have largely accepted the value and importance of hybrid work. Your challenge lies in demonstrating to them how code-first development and legacy systems are an impediment to that, something likely best done through small, limited proof-of-concept pilots. “You need buy-in from the entire company,” says Budha. “If you begin an API-first transformation, and half the team prefers legacy systems and opposes the change, you’re going to end up with different teams working in different ways, perhaps even in opposition to one another. And it is difficult to make progress when one team pushes and the other pulls.”
“You need to have a deep understanding of the culture of an organisation when you’re creating a transformation strategy so that you take the right approach.”
Michael Marschean CIO SubCom Learn more about Michael →
“The key to getting buy-in for transformation is getting an executive sponsor. Without buy-in and sponsorship from the top, this level of change won’t succeed.”
Tim Chase Feld CISCO Laceworks Learn more about Tim →
Key points
01
Anticipating and planning for digital transformation challenges improve your chance of executing a successful transformation.
02
Legacy systems represent a common early barrier to becoming an API-first organisation.
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Other potential roadblocks include buy-in from existing personnel, recruitment for skills and cultural fit and team structure.