A Digital Transformation Maturity Ladder Model
By: Dennis Hambeukers
Tags: Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Agile, Design Leadership, Digital Transformation

The digital transformation ladder model consists of 7 stages that are all categorized by a view of the world. It builds up, so you take the insights from one stage with you to the next until you reach the top of the ladder and digital transformation is complete. Let me just quickly walk you through each stage.

Stage 1: digitization

What I see around me is that digital transformation typically starts with the idea that it’s about technology. So the first thing most organization tend to do is focus on technology. Practically this means digitization of existing products and services. Existing platforms or custom built technology is used to create a new version of products and services that can be accessed and or used through digital technology. Benefits are scaleability, efficiency and new opportunities for business transactions.

This is a technologic way to see digital transformation.

Stage 2: user experience

The next insight that I see coming up after this phase is that the user experience of the digital products and services is crucial to its success. Simply digitizing is not enough. The bar for the user experience is high and getting higher by the minute. Standard, out of the box applications are typically not enough to differentiate the offering and create a competitive advantage. They offer general middle of the road experiences that can be good for a lot of purposes. But creating an engaging value proposition often requires a custom user experience design. The benefits here are a competitive value proposition.

This is a user experience design way to look at digital transformation.

Stage 3: assumptions

Creating an engaging user experience at first seems to be about a beautiful user interface. But the next stage is defined by the insight that that is not enough. Typically a lot of assumptions are made that don’t necessarily are true for users. Even a beautifully designed user interface can fail if it doesn’t solve fundamental user needs in a meaningful way. In this stage, organization start to question their assumptions and testing them to arrive at more engaging solutions.

This is the lean startup way to look at digital transformation.

Stage 4: processes

The next stage is about humans. Not just the users, but also the people working in the organization. In this stage, organization recognize that delivering state of the art user experiences requires the people working on that delivery to have a flexible mindset, a prototyping mindset, a minimal viable product mindset, a cross-functional mindset, a user-centered mindset. Processes like Agile are great ways to instill these mindsets and create the needs for people to develop new skills. Without the right processes in place to create the necessary mind- and skill-sets, delivery of excellent digital products and services is not possible. The organization starts to change. Typically this starts in innovation projects.

This is the Agile way to look at digital transformation.

Stage 5: strategy

In this stage, organizations learn that digital strategy is not something you can think up and implement top-down. The possibilities and impossibilities of technology needs to influence the strategy. The learnings from the user research and the agile projects needs to feed into the strategy. Strategy, tactics and operations needs to flow into each other for digital transformation to work. To leverage digital technology, strategy has be emergent. Not based on assumptions but on actual insights that come from doing projects. Feedback loops need to include adjusting the strategy. In this phase, strategy becomes something that is designed in iterations, constantly being re-designed based on progressive insight.

This is the strategic design view on digital transformation.

Stage 6: continuous state

At some point, organizations realize that digital transformation is not a project or a collection of projects but a continuous state. The new reality asks for constant adaptation, not a one-time change. The organization needs to constantly learn and adjust.

This is the learning organization view on digital transformation.

Stage 7: digital core

Finally, organization realize that in order to flourish in the new reality of the digital world, digital needs to be at the core of the organization. To make the best use of the possibilities of digital technology, the organization needs to be re-designed around technology and not the other way around. Digital native companies don’t need digital transformation because they are designed around digital technologies. For non-digital-native organizations this is the state they have to achieve. It’s no longer thinking up what you want to do and then figure out how digital technology can support that. The winners in the digital game start with the opportunities of digital technology and figure out how they can succeed in existing business sectors. Businesses like Uber, AirBnB and Spotify are not technology companies. They are transport, travel and music companies but with technology at the heart. And that makes all the difference. They organize around digital technology. They are digital at the core.

This is the business design view on digital transformation.

Feedback?

Does this make any sense? Does this model create a valid framework to think about and organize digital transformation? This is a first sketch that I want to use as a framework to think about how design can add value to digital transformation journeys.