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The “human-to-technology”
language challenge
Translating our imagination into working code
Greg Smith, Mandeep Dhillon, Laurie Guillodo, Xabier Ormaechea, Carl Bate

Within every business, software can potentially drive a significant
increase in enterprise value, whether by seizing new revenue
opportunities, fundamentally transforming the organization,
or driving efficiencies to compete effectively against everevolving rivals. However, translating ideas into working software
is not easy. There are notable limitations on how people andorganizations “talk to” technology. This is a significant hurdle fororganizations in achieving their desired business outcomes. In
this article, we look at typical business-to-technology language
problems, and show how to overcome these through new ideas
based on our recent experience and the techniques used bydigital leaders.
Innovation through software
It is often said that within every businessis a technology business. As the digital
revolution gains ever more momentum,
organizations increasingly turn to thisinternal technology business – for instance,
when they seek to increase revenue
through new or diversified products, drive
down costs through optimization andautomation, or figure out how to deal witha new or revitalized competitor.
Current rankings of the world’s largest companies are dominatedby organizations whose principal engines of value creation are thesoftware platforms that underpin them. Innovation increasingly
resides within software, rather than physical engineering or more
traditional product R&D. Whether it is pharma, automotive or
telco, more and more innovation is generated and simulated within
software before being made physical. Essentially, the ability tosolve a problem or realize an opportunity fully within software iswhat will increasingly determine enterprise winners and losers.

It is often said thatwithin every business is
a technology business,with software central
to enterprise success.
However, translatingideas into working
software is not easy.
Looking at typicalbusiness-to-technology
language problems,
this article shows how
to overcome themthrough new ideas andtechniques used bydigital leaders.

Box 1: Medtech sector
The medtech sector demonstrates how software unlocks
enterprise value. While initially created to develop and manufacture
medical devices, medtech companies now increasingly focus on
capturing data in order to generate valuable insight and create
new revenue streams. Devices become enablers to harvest
data, unlocking significant additional value. For example, iRhythm
articulates its unique selling point around data (e.g., “more than
150 million hours of annotated ECG data”) and “transparent
insight”, with little emphasis on its medical device itself1. The
success of this approach is reflected in its 2016 IPO, in which
it was valued at 65% above its estimate2.

Unfortunately, while the ability to master software is critical to
future success, the barriers to achieving this for most organizations
are high. Twenty years of outsourcing, offshoring and “off-theshelf” enterprise IT solutions have left organizations with little orno internal capability and understanding of how to craft softwareand harness it to achieve business goals. This is being exacerbatedby two trends:
1) the addition of digital software on top of legacy applications
2) the desire to move to software-as-a-service (SaaS)
So where should an organization start?
Language is fundamentally a way of transferring ideas fromone person to another person or group, and the “language ofbusiness” has, for centuries, required us to understand multiple
dialects specific to the organization and its operations. This could
be the requirement for all senior executives to understand the“language of finance”, or for employees to learn industry- andcompany-specific terms.
1. irhythmtech.com
2. MobiHealthNews, iRhythm goes public with $107M IPO, October 2016

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With the rise of the software-enabled business, the language
challenge now extends beyond the complexities of human-tohuman communication and requires everyone to be bilingual. As
well as being able to communicate effectively with other people,
we all now need to be able to communicate effectively withtechnology. If we think of the many ways in a typical business day
that we still fail to communicate clearly between ourselves, thisis significantly amplified when we consider human-to-technology
communication.
Limitations in how humans “talk to” technology ultimately
reduce the value of desired outcomes, and are a key issue fororganizations that are trying to leverage “digital” to transform theircompanies. While there is no shortage of best management theory
and practice on the subject of human-to-human communications
in businesses, perhaps surprisingly, there is much less understood
about the equally important subject of human-to-technology
communications. In this article, we would like to focus on four
aspects of human-to-technology communication where we seecommon pitfalls and challenges:
1. User requirements – defining desired outcomes
2.	Technology requirements – defining the technology
architecture to prevent limitations on desired outcomes
3. Coding – writing code to achieve a working software product4.	Software product and adoption – getting users andcustomers to use the final product (which may include
changes in their behaviors)
In combination, these factors drive businesses to waste precious
resources, time and investment, as well as organizational
commitment.
1. User requirements
When capturing user demand, organizations can be overly
deterministic. For example, enterprise solutions such as ERP and
CRM force organizations to follow the processes set out in theirsoftware, leading to a number of issues, including:-	The framework applied can feel restrictive to business users(and to technical project managers)-	The framework can be focused on describing requirementsthat the tool can provide – rather than the actual needs anddesired outcomes of the business-	The language used to describe requirements can beoverly precise
We need a language that captures the richness of demand, yet we
use one that is prescriptive and artificially limited by the constraintsof supply. By completing the processes set out in enterprisesolutions, we fool ourselves into thinking that success will
follow. Yet, once configured, the resulting solution does not meetbusiness expectations, burdening the organization with softwarethat does not deliver the intended benefits.
2. Technology requirements
It is easy to believe that if a language is not descriptive enough,it can be a limiting factor. Yet, this contradicts with the underlying
technology that unleashed the internet. Representational State
Transfer (REST) is a technology architecture pattern that helped
the internet become what it is today. Its language is based on justfour verbs: GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. RESTful web services
provide interoperability between different computer systems– with these four verbs, the only limitation to leveraging online
computer systems is one’s imagination.
The simplicity of REST directly contrasts with the complexityof Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) – another computing
language originally defined in 1998 that allows web services to“talk to” computer systems on the internet. SOAP has a muchricher descriptive framework, which is also more complex, andtherefore restrictive.
At the time, the thought was that the richer and more complex thelanguage descriptor, the more one could accomplish, yet REST has
proven this is not the case. The complex framework that SOAP
uses to connect web services ultimately drives an equally complex

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and constraining manual/bible of enterprise tools.
We therefore need a language that unleashes imagination andcreativity, yet many enterprise tools are built on technology
protocols that limit and constrain. By falling into the trap that
more technology descriptors help codify requirements, we
actually limit the business value through multiple, complex
and constraining protocols.
3. Coding
Coding today has a fundamental limitation – the number of people
that can code. This scarcity of resources pushes up salaries andtherefore means that organizations face budget issues when it
comes to employing programmers. How do we, therefore, allow
more people to create software, so that it becomes a process,rather than requiring them to learn to code?
To do this, we need a language that removes the barriers between
ideas and execution as working code. Yet, we have a humanto-technology language taxonomy that, despite best efforts,
has multiple barriers to entry. The end result is that we limit
the number of people with great ideas who can quickly createbusiness value.
4. Software product and adoption
Adoption of new technologies within organizations is often
met with passive resistance or “tissue rejection”. A recent
Arthur D. Little article3 identified some common pitfalls, which
are compounded by the issues described above. For example,
many organizations underestimate behavioral issues – failingto adequately plan how employees will adopt the tool – andmismanage communication, which impact adoption.
We need a language that provides meaning by reflecting real-world
complexity, and is simple to understand. Yet, we often neglect thisand its impact on new technologies.
3. See “Tackling the Digital Hype”, Prism 2016

How we “talk-to” technology to translate our ideas toworking code
Overcoming this challenge is not easy, but the following
framework provides a blueprint for improved humantechnology communications.

Challenges In
Human-To-Tech
Translation

Jobs To Be Done
Tech Requirements
What Would The Web Do
CodingSoftware Product &Adoption

Smart-Stitching
Memes For Adoption

1. Jobs To Be Done
Enterprise software processes can limit the innovation potentialof organizations. Therefore, when selecting or building new tools,
it is important to deploy design-thinking concepts to help capture
requirements that can test outcomes in a meaningful way:1.	
User stories – this captures actor, action and benefit, and isalways expressed in a specific format (“as an <actor>, I cando <action>, so that I get <benefit>”). Through workshops,
this tool helps business users define what they want. The
only limitation of this method is the imagination of thebusiness user, which can be constrained by how “they’ve
always done it”; this is why it is vital to capture the benefit.
By understanding the action and benefit in conjunction, one
can determine the difference, and test and validate different
scenarios with end users.
2. Personas – this captures examples of users and their“pain” and “gain” points – i.e., what makes their lives
difficult today, and what would remedy their issues.
Personas also capture how a user may use a technology(e.g., frequency, location, device), which has an impact onoverall technology requirements.

wwwSolutions To
Human-To-Tech
Challenges

User Requirements

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3.	
Jobs To Be Done – a key component of personas and user
stories is to define the ultimate desired outcome. Theseare expressed as “Jobs To Be Done” (JTBD), as explainedby the JTBD framework developed by Clayton Christensen4
and Anthony Ulwick5. This is the core desired action andoutcome – and removes the impediment of how people
have worked before to open up new ways to tackle
old problems.
Arthur D. Little recently supported a major manufacturing company
looking to select new tools to manage its innovation. Its choice
was between traditional enterprise tools (which were costly andcomplex, and would take time to deliver value), a new softwareas-a-service tool (which may not have provided the required
functionality and was perceived to be risky) and building its own.
By applying JTBD, Arthur D. Little was able to quickly test >40
tools in the market, and provide a real choice, articulating thepros and cons based on user stories and JTBD (supported by a
traditional three - and five-year business case).
2. What Would the Web Do (WWWD)REST is an architecture pattern that has underpinned and propelled
the internet to where it is today. Other similar technology patterns
have been adopted to help drive and deliver innovative digitalsolutions, and using these Digital Design Principles helps deliverrobust, performant and highly extensible solutions to meetbusiness needs. The ultimate purpose is to deliver technology
architecture patterns that are open and flexible, which do not limit
desired outcomes. User stories and JTBD are useful to help test
these requirements.
4. Clayton Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall, “Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and theCure”, Harvard Business Review, December 2005
5. Anthony W. Ulwick, “What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create
Breakthrough Products and Services”, McGraw-Hill, 2005

Some examples of Digital Design Principles:- esign for Uncertainty – build for flexibility, and enableD
strategic agility-	Leading Edge, not Bleeding Edge – ensure tools are first classand proven, but also appropriate for your needs-

 utomated, Scalable and Agile – build for automation byA
default, and ensure this is reflected in your business case-	“Openable” Data and Interfaces – fully accessible, one versionof the truth.
An airline company that wanted to provide better situationalawareness to its business-crisis teams followed these principles.
By using RESTful interfaces to extract data from existing legacy
enterprise tools, combining it, and then providing a dashboard view,
it helped employees on the ground make decisions based on newand emerging insight. A significant benefit was that it allowed teams
to hold their nerve and not cancel flights, as they could see from thedashboard that the incident was improving.
3. Smart-stitching
Traditionally, organizations looking to acquire software had two
fundamental approaches – build or buy. Unfortunately, both of theseapproaches have proven to be problematic, leading to the poor trackrecord of IT project delivery and frustrated business leaders. The
main challenges for a 100% built solution are normally time and cost,
and the shortage of skills within an organization to deliver – and,just as importantly, to manage – a bespoke software development
process. Unfortunately, bought packages have different but equally
debilitating problems. The change required to match businessprocesses to standard configurations and flows within software
packages has, all too often, proven impossible for businesses toadapt to in anything other than trivial or genuinely commoditizeddomains.
Fortunately, best practice among technology innovators andsoftware-driven businesses has opened up a third approach that we
describe as “smart-stitching”. In this pattern, an end-to-end businesscapability can be split into elements that can be delivered using
standard software platforms, which are increasingly open source,

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cloud based and delivered as a service. When the analysis of whatis needed is carried out, the elements that are truly bespoke to asolution or organization are typically a small percentage of the total
footprint, and custom development of these components becomesa manageable and time-efficient exercise. The commodity andcustom elements can then be “stitched” together into an end-toend solution.
Another significant benefit of the smart-stitching approach is theability to exploit legacy technologies using the same techniques.
Once legacy platforms are looked on as an asset to be harnessedand exploited, rather than an obstacle requiring wholesale
replacement, the footprint of the required solution often shrinks
dramatically. Often the question asked by an organization needs tobe reframed to: “What is the minimum change we need to maketo achieve new capabilities?”
Critically, when considering a “smart-stitch” approach, companies
should always put “design before technology” to ensure that thesolution is wrapped with a user experience (UX) that is intuitiveand designed to drive adoption. This ensures that the diversityof elements comprising the overall solution (legacy, commodity
and custom) is hidden from the customer or user, who has anexperience built around their needs.
A large entertainment and gaming company used smart-stitching
to deliver an innovative, new customer point-of-sale omnichannel
experience. This involved taking existing and new technologies,
and linking them to enable automation of staff tasks, in order toprovide a better customer experience, and to help them better
meet emerging government regulations.
4. Memes for adoption
The word “meme” conjures a mental image of a joke that is
spread online through social platforms, but it is also a powerfulbusiness tool to pass on an idea or new information over two
speeds: quickly through viral adoption, and slowly by embedding
values and culture. Indeed, Arthur Dehon Little’s response of,“Who says it can’t be done?” when asked whether it was possible
to create a silk purse out of a pig’s ear, is an excellent example –one that has inspired both consultants and clients since 1886.

Memes act by delivering a simple message. The purpose of thatmessage can be two-fold: to deliver a quantum of information to
explain and enact a change or desired outcome, and/or to help
embed adoption of that desired outcome into the DNA of anorganization’s ways of working and culture. The first must happen
very quickly, almost intuitively, to the receiver of the message.
The second happens over time, as a feature/by-product of theways of working and culture, through peer-effect. Both require ameme to have similar characteristics: simple, short, and salient.
Another important characteristic is that the meme explains thedesired outcome.
There are numerous historic examples of companies applying
memes to help deliver internal change (e.g., “Change before
you have to” – Jack Welch, General Electric; and “Obsess overcustomers” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon). Emerging digital disruptors
are particularly good at embedding memes reflecting their ways ofworking. Netflix recently updated its 100+-slide pack6 into a 10-pageprose7. The two documents contain a series of powerful memes(e.g., “People over process”, “Context, not control”, “Highly aligned,loosely coupled”) – so powerful that they have actually spread way
beyond the company’s borders: one version of the initial deck has
more than 16 million views on SlideShare.
Arthur D. Little has used memes with its clients to help drive
adoption of new ideas and technologies – for example, the meme,“show me, not tell me”, which is fully aligned to agile8 ways ofworking. Our teams use this to create a “slice” of the working
solution – not throwaway code – to show the art of the possible
through a working proof of concept. Critically, it produces a tangible
product in weeks (not months or years) that can be tried and tested
by business and technology stakeholders, or customers, for early
feedback, iteration and buy-in.
6. slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
7. https://jobs.netflix.com/culture/
8. Agile Manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/

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Insight for the Executive
Increasingly, companies will win or lose based on the value they
can generate in the software layer. This requires executives
to help their organizations improve their ability to “talk to”
technology. However, traditional approaches are constrained, byeither restrictive language and frameworks, closed technology
architecture patterns, or not thoroughly considering adoption.
There are new ways of thinking and working that can help improvethe effectiveness of human-to-technology knowledge transfer,which are summarized by:
1. Jobs To Be Done
2. What Would the Web Do?
3. Smart-stitching
4. Memes for adoption
Wikipedia’s definition of technology is: “... the collection oftechniques, skills, methods and processes used in the productionof goods or services…” In this sense, the language we use totalk to machines, to conceive and codify software, is a type oftechnology itself. We therefore recommend that executives lookat how their organizations can understand and get better at thetechnology of language, if they want to drive success.

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Greg Smith
is a Partner in the London office of Arthur D. Little, and amember of the Digital Transformation Practice.
Mandeep Dhillon
is a Manager in the London office of Arthur D. Little, and amember of the Digital Transformation Practice.
Laurie Guillodo
is a Manager in the London office of Arthur D. Little, and amember of the Digital Transformation Practice.
Xabier Ormaechea
is a Consultant in the London office of Arthur D. Little, and amember of the Digital Transformation Practice.
Carl Bateis a Partner in the London office of Arthur D Little, and amember of the Digital Transformation Practice.