Companies ship their org charts, says Conway’s law. I saw a great example of this recently. Marketing owned the website content and branding, someone else the pension planning tool, someone else the ISA platform, someone else the client servicing.
Apart from slightly different shades of red and green and font faces as you browsed across the digital estate, the most disjointed experience was not being known as the same user as you moved between different (underlying) systems. Can you imagine?
Having to sign up three or four different times, possibly even in the same browser session, just to access various marketing brochureware and lead generation tools, and then if you actually decide to take out a product, having to sign up again. And how on earth do you de-dupe the backend data reliably, allowing users to self-manage their personal info? (Hint: you can’t).
You can probably guess how well customer acquisition was going at this particular company, and yet Customer Experience (CX), who conducted round after round of customer feedback, was pulling their hair out simply because the managers in charge were not incentivised to change the situation.
What can you do to improve matters as a Business Analyst collecting requirements for the next ‘add-on’ system? Realistically, not very much until the managers much higher up decide to collaborate with their own peers, and that is the remit of consultancy and organisational change professionals. But until then…
Each department was performing perfectly well, thank you very much. Sales leads were generated in each silo at rates higher than their self-determined targets required. The company board seemed happy too, receiving updates from the marketing department that the ‘company-wide, digital transformation’ was going well, even though actual revenue remained ‘several years’ away.
Bless. x
Better Software UK specialises in software requirements for Legacy System Replacement 🔥; particularly for remote, outsourced and offshore development teams working in financial services.