Presentation Summary:

We know we need to change the way we work to leverage the opportunities of the rapidly evolving tapestry of digital opportunities available to us. The demand for better services is there from the public and the expectation for change has been set from the highest levels of government. Yet, it has turned out to be extremely difficult to make these changes due to cultural inertia and ingrained processes that always favour the status quo. This presentation is about why we must change, why it is difficult, what we did in my organisation to change and lessons learned.

The participants will see a real example where an organisation has successfully adopted an agile way of working, the value agile is delivering and learn how cultural change can be implemented. They will learn that digital transformation *is* cultural transformation because to leverage the vast number of alternative and rapidly evolving approaches to almost everything we do in our lives we need a culture of exploration and innovation. Due to the inherent complexity and rapid change, we cannot possibly predict and plan our solutions fully ahead of time. New information will become available as a result of our experiments and the new opportunities and challenges will emerge as solutions are built. Moreover, the idea that one individual can have enough information to make detailed technological decision is no longer valid (if it ever was).

One way to navigate this rapidly changing and complex environment is through collaborative, iterative and value focused approaches:

• Collaborative, because no individual can have all the necessary answers. An empowered team can collectively explore and narrow down viable options as they go. But if the team works in a command control situation, they are less likely to be successful, because their options will be constrained.
• Iterative, because we need to respond to change and the learnings we get from small deliverables. The value of Minimal Viable Products is twofold: Staged delivery of value and learning what is needed and possible.
• Value focused, because we can easily lose track of what our systems should be delivering unless we continually include the users - those who need to benefit from them. Most importantly, though, the closer we are to achieving value for someone else, the happier we generally are because we feel validated. And that in turn leads to better outcomes.

Speaker Biography: Dr Ole Nielsen - Deputy CDO & Director of Digital Transformation, ACT Gov

Ole Nielsen is Deputy Chief Digital Officer and Director of Digital Transformation in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government where he is promoting the implementation of the ACT Digital Strategy. Until recently, Ole was Director for Scientific Computing at Geoscience Australia where he was responsible for a large team of scientific software engineers and champion for digital transformation in the agency. He also developed the agency’s Digital Science Strategy which sets out a vision for how the agency can embrace the rapidly changing digital environment to remain at the cutting edge of geoscience. Ole loves the nexus where people and technology combine.

Event Details

Venue: Mantra on Northbourne, 84 Northbourne Ave, Canberra City 2612
Date: Thursday, 8th June 2017
Time: 5:00pm for Registration & Networking, 6:00pm Start for 7:00pm Finish
Fee: Free for all IIBA members and Non-IIBA members.

Next IIBA event - 28th of June, IIBA Practitioner Forum: Pathway to Strategy Analysis - does the average BA know how to get there?

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