Transforming Business Moments into Business ModelsTransforming Business Moments into Business...

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Transforming Business Moments into Business Models Isabell Schrader direkt gruppe GmbH Holzmarkt 2 50676 Köln mail: [email protected] Olaf Droegehorn University of Applied Sciences Harz Department of Automation & Computer Science Friedrichstrasse 57-59 38855 Wernigerode, Germany mail: [email protected] Abstract Looking into traditional German and global companies discloses that business units can’t answer fast enough to changing market situations. This stems mainly from the lack of business models for a digital market. Business units should understand new technologies and the way customers want to interact with them. Based on former products, transformed into digital artefacts, specific business moments might arise and can be transformed into new business models. In this paper an interdisciplinary approach of cross- functional teams is suggested, empowering business units to understand and utilize IT trends. By forming BizDevOps-teams business moments can be identified and exploited into new business models. Expanding the idea of DevOps towards business units an unparalleled potential of knowledge and innovation can be unleashed. Keywords: BizDevOps, cross-functional teams, digitization, innovative management structure, new mind-sets, IT as enabler 1 Introduction According to A.T. Kearney, Bain, Crisp, Forrester, Gartner, IDC, ISG, PAC and Roland Berger, topics such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Microservice Architecture, Robotics and Cyber Security will dominate CIO agendas in the near future [5]. Intelligent Apps, intelligent things, Cloud to the Edge and Conversation Platforms are part of Gartner’s technology trends. Everything is going to be event-driven. Companies are striving for being able to quickly recognize and respond to changing business conditions. For instance: selling a car or landing an aircraft would be events that are immediately registered, analyzed,recorded and could be linked to subsequent events. To realize those scenarios analysts note that technologies such as event brokers, IoT, cloud computing, blockchain, in-memory databases or artificial intelligence are essential [5]. However, a change in culture and leadership is required in order to achieve full value of such models and technologies. Moreover, the creation of new IT-driven Business-Models and design thinking is needed to exploit the possibilities of new technologies in the business devisions. Some CIOs already actively address the necessary cultural change that comes along with the digital transformation. They transform not only their IT landscapes and systems, but also their IT organization and technical teams as well. In digital teams, the focus shifts more to the needs of the business and customers and less on existing projects and systems. By this an innovation culture will be created and it is prognosed that “by 2020, 60 percent of CIOs will implement a new IT business model and new IT culture that shifts the focus away from IT projects to digitally focused products” [5]. This will keep IT departments moving and continuously re-thinking their way of working, finding new ways of digital working and creating future workplaces. But what does the business devisions do meanwhile? Are they able to derive new IT-driven business- models, enhanced, tuned and revolutionized business ideas? This paper presents several aspects, solution strategies and approaches to change the mind-set of employees and managers in business divions. Under the assumption that an IT- Organization is well performing and operating Platformization, Microservices and Service Orchestation to improve not only business performance but also supports and developes new business models as well as processes. Hence, components are outlined that are necessary for the business in order to understand IT as enabler and transform business moments into new business models. 2 Motivation Deficits in communication between IT and business departments are still in place. Obviously contradicting instructions, lack of expertise as well as personal dissonances are usually preventing cooperation. IT departments often complain about business devisions, frequently demanding sophisticated additional software- and IT functions and expected immediate implementation demanded by business. At the same time business units complain about IT employees, assuming that they have no idea about the business challenges and do not really understand what is needed. In fact, no improvements have occurred although the ways of working within IT-departments have already changed. Among the most frequent issues is still the different language and the ignorance of each party involved [6], especially in traditional german Int'l Conf. e-Learning, e-Bus., EIS, and e-Gov. | EEE'18 | 87 ISBN: 1-60132-474-X, CSREA Press ©

Transcript of Transforming Business Moments into Business ModelsTransforming Business Moments into Business...

Page 1: Transforming Business Moments into Business ModelsTransforming Business Moments into Business Models. Isabell Schrader . direkt gruppe GmbH Holzmarkt 2 ... Business units should understand

Transforming Business Moments into Business Models

Isabell Schrader

direkt gruppe GmbH Holzmarkt 2

50676 Köln

mail: [email protected]

Olaf Droegehorn

University of Applied Sciences Harz

Department of Automation & Computer

Science Friedrichstrasse 57-59

38855 Wernigerode, Germany

mail: [email protected]

Abstract – Looking into traditional German and global

companies discloses that business units can’t answer fast

enough to changing market situations. This stems mainly from

the lack of business models for a digital market.

Business units should understand new technologies and the

way customers want to interact with them. Based on former

products, transformed into digital artefacts, specific business

moments might arise and can be transformed into new business

models. In this paper an interdisciplinary approach of cross-

functional teams is suggested, empowering business units to

understand and utilize IT trends. By forming BizDevOps-teams

business moments can be identified and exploited into new

business models. Expanding the idea of DevOps towards

business units an unparalleled potential of knowledge and

innovation can be unleashed.

Keywords: BizDevOps, cross-functional teams, digitization,

innovative management structure, new mind-sets, IT as enabler

1 Introduction

According to A.T. Kearney, Bain, Crisp, Forrester, Gartner,

IDC, ISG, PAC and Roland Berger, topics such as Machine

Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Microservice Architecture,

Robotics and Cyber Security will dominate CIO agendas in the

near future [5]. Intelligent Apps, intelligent things, Cloud to the

Edge and Conversation Platforms are part of Gartner’s

technology trends. Everything is going to be event-driven.

Companies are striving for being able to quickly recognize and

respond to changing business conditions. For instance: selling

a car or landing an aircraft would be events that are

immediately registered, analyzed,recorded and could be linked

to subsequent events. To realize those scenarios analysts note

that technologies such as event brokers, IoT, cloud computing,

blockchain, in-memory databases or artificial intelligence are

essential [5]. However, a change in culture and leadership is

required in order to achieve full value of such models and

technologies.

Moreover, the creation of new IT-driven Business-Models and

design thinking is needed to exploit the possibilities of new

technologies in the business devisions.

Some CIOs already actively address the necessary cultural

change that comes along with the digital transformation. They

transform not only their IT landscapes and systems, but also

their IT organization and technical teams as well. In digital

teams, the focus shifts more to the needs of the business and

customers and less on existing projects and systems. By this an

innovation culture will be created and it is prognosed that “by

2020, 60 percent of CIOs will implement a new IT business

model and new IT culture that shifts the focus away from IT

projects to digitally focused products” [5]. This will keep IT

departments moving and continuously re-thinking their way of

working, finding new ways of digital working and creating

future workplaces. But what does the business devisions do

meanwhile? Are they able to derive new IT-driven business-

models, enhanced, tuned and revolutionized business ideas?

This paper presents several aspects, solution strategies and

approaches to change the mind-set of employees and managers

in business divions. Under the assumption that an IT-

Organization is well performing and operating Platformization,

Microservices and Service Orchestation to improve not only

business performance but also supports and developes new

business models as well as processes. Hence, components are

outlined that are necessary for the business in order to

understand IT as enabler and transform business moments into

new business models.

2 Motivation

Deficits in communication between IT and business

departments are still in place. Obviously contradicting

instructions, lack of expertise as well as personal dissonances

are usually preventing cooperation. IT departments often

complain about business devisions, frequently demanding

sophisticated additional software- and IT functions and

expected immediate implementation demanded by business. At

the same time business units complain about IT employees,

assuming that they have no idea about the business challenges

and do not really understand what is needed. In fact, no

improvements have occurred although the ways of working

within IT-departments have already changed. Among the most

frequent issues is still the different language and the ignorance

of each party involved [6], especially in traditional german

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corporates. From the authors point of view the deficits are

mainly cultural and personal issues. Both sides are suspicious,

stubborn and watch each other suspiciously. The IT department

needs more user know-how and the business devisions need to

accept that IT colleagues are more than just technical freaks.

According to the IDG Magazine “Computerwoche” the biggest

mistakes in communication between IT and business are the

following [1]:

IT and business speak different languages

Human conflicts interfere with the spirit of

cooperation

People are shying away from taking responsibilities

Business departments do not want to admit that IT

professionals have increased their knowledge about

business and its processes

Guesses and rumors prevent transparency

Diffuse fears on both sides lead to misunderstandings

Employees are trying to tackle business issues with

technical solutions and vice versa

Managers can’t achieve a fruitful and prospering

collaboration between business and IT departments

A major concern, especially in the digital transformation

process of german corporations, is the fact that business units

are usually only expecting to get IT support for their classic,

old-fashioned business models.

While IT departments already are delivering new, faster and

demand-related services, the business does not respond in a

smiliar updated and enhanced manner to servce new markets.

IT personell has, thanks to innovative CIOs, been trained to

support their business customers in a just-in-time and agile

manner. Business personell however, does not seem to adapt to

agile working styles and adaptive market offerings in contrast

to their IT colleagues. Still “it is of upmost importance for

modern companies that business people understand at least the

business possibilities” [7] stemming from IT updates.

Some could argue that a key user concept could solve all the

problems between IT and business. It might be a solution for

overcoming communication issues; internal business processes

may become more efficiently whenever key users are testing

new software-functions before they go live. However new

business models or services for the end-customers are not

created in this way. Nevertheless, this concept of collaboration

is a good start and should be adapted when thinking about the

so-called “new way of digital working”.

The critical question is how the business departments can be

pushed towards new IT-driven business models and to

understand IT solutions as key enablers for new was of service

offerings. How to get the business more interested in IT and

upcoming technologies. Furthermore, once the business

actually sees IT as the main enabler, how to recognize business

moments and create business models with the help of IT?

3 Crossfunctional collaboration needs to

be part of daily business

Given the new digital technologies, a workplace becomes

indepent and available regardless of the location of employees

and which equipment they use. Crossfunctional collaboration

is from a technical point of view easier than it has ever been

before. However, most of the time old-fashioned ways of

working and thinking prevent traditional german corporates to

exploit and disrupt themselves. Other cultures seem to adapt

faster to the ‘Silicon Valley-way of thinking’. Meaning they are

able to build a future modern company today rather than

tomorrow, by adapting (lean) startup methods and transforming

working culture. Eric Ries reveals in “The Lean Startup” how

entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses of all

kinds, ranging from early-stage startups to established

companies, in order to grow revenues, drive innovation and

transform themselves into truly modern organizations [3]. In

the authors point of view driving innovation and transforming

into a modern company cannot happen within silos. Traditional

German companies have long histories in stable market

conditions. These have led to well known management

methods including market forecasts based on experiences made

in the past. But new, IT-enabled markets and their customers

can’t be predicted in the same way. The frequency of change in

terms of customer expectations, IT Self-Services and even

business models is increasing. Due to long lasting habbits and

management traditions, German companies are still hesitating

to leave their old habits.

Silo mentality is unfortunately a common practice in corporate

environments, as illustrated in figure 1. As defined by the

Business Dictonairy silo mentality is “a mind-set present in

some companies when certain departments or sectors do not

wish to share information with others in the same company.

This type of mentality will reduce the efficiency of the overall

operation, reduce morale, and may contribute to the demise of

a productive company culture” [12].

Distinct silo mentality and its drawbacks are well known: it

inhibits cooperation, prevents engagement, slows down

innovation, increases costs, hinders progress, and endangers

success. In a nutshell: silo thinking is as useful as a hot water

bag made out of chocolate. Why is it still so common anyway?

And above all, what can be done about it?

During the last couple of years, IT was being forced to become

much faster and more agile. Emerging from the collison of two

major related trends the term DevOps was created.

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Figure 1: Illustrating silo-mentality [11]

The first trend sprang from applying agile and lean approaches

to operations work, meaning the maintanaince of the IT-

infrastructure, leading to the so-called “agile infrastructure” or

“agile operations”. The second trend stems from an increased

understanding of the value of collaboration between software

developers and the related operations staff. Meaning

collaboration throughout all stages of the development

lifecycle when creating and operating a service, and therefore

understanding the importance of continuous and at the same

time agile operations to keep the increasingly service-oriented

world up and running [2]. As it stands right now, IT

departments have found ways for being able to respond flexible

and quickly to new business requirements. The DevOps

approach helps to transfer agile methods to IT operations and

therefore combines approaches from the software development

arena with challenges and tasks of IT operations. This allows

for shorter release cycles and minimizes the risk of untested

items, as software developers are closely working together with

the IT personell being responsible for keeping the infrastructure

and IT-Services up and running. By this, typical bugs produced

during software engineering processes can be found and

mitigated before a new IT-Service is launched.

Although DevOps already leads to faster service developments

and a lean way of service provisioning, it only focusses on the

collaboration of different IT departments, still leaving out the

business devisions.

However also business seems to deal with breaking down silo

mentality between different units. Companies tried several

methods like [9]:

Jobrotation

Incentives

Wiki or Social Intranet

Interdiscplinary teams

Policies or guidelines

Identification

During a jobrotation, employees are being sent across the

company to take different positions temporarily in order to gain

knowledge, experience and to expand their horizon. Of course,

this method does not only have benefits. Changing the location

involves costs and additional effort. People need to be newly

trained and cared for everywhere within the company.

Substitutes need to be organized and possible degredations of

quality or quantity need to be compensated. Jobrotation might

be more suitable for an IT company, since an engineer is

usually not a public relations expert and vice versa. However,

there are also business units that are closely linked to each

other.

Nevertheless, individuals and entire departmes in German

corporations are driven by selfishness. Most of the time the

organization itself and its culture can be blamed for an distinct

lonely fighter mentality. Specifically, incentive systems can

promote silo thinking. A scenario:

Assuming that a department strives for innovation and invests

into new knowledge and technology this leads eventually to

larger amounts of sold items and therefore to more revenue.

However, due to higher investment costs for knowledge and

technology the overall scorecard of the department is, at least

in the beginning phase, still negative. An incentive system

might promote here another department, not doing anything

and therefore not innovating at all, but keeping their scorecard

in balance. Although this evaluation is short sighted, most

incentive systems don’t take into account a future benefit

produced by immaterial goods like knowledge or technology.

Hence a bonus system can stifle innovation and promote silo-

mentality. In this case, the management need to act in order to

put smarter bonus systems in place.

A common tool which even exists in German Corporates is a

so called “company wiki”. A company wiki could be explained

to a layman as a corporate library or as Wikipedia in dwarf

format. A wiki serves the company as a knowledge store. A

space in which for instance requirements engineering can be

accessed, ideas are sketched and exchanged. The major goal of

such a tool is to expose the knowledge of the individuals in

order to become group knowledge. So a wiki could be

understood as a large project in which everyone is allowed to

participate. A project promotes participation and knowledge

sharing. Typically, knowledge is exactly what is often buried

under individual silos. Information A remains in silo A,

information B in silo B. A wiki makes information accessible

to all members of a team, a department or a company.

The social media intranet follows the same idea. It allows the

central storage of information. Here, information can be

searched and found by anyone. Again, with the aim of ending

or at least mitigating the monopolization of individual

knowledge. Leveling up unequal levels of knowledge within

the workforce is a way to overcome silo-mentality.

Especially during the digital transformation, it seems to be

more than logical and very important to form interdisciplinary

teams. In interdisciplinary teams, individual members are

challenged towards new ways of thinking and sometimes are

forced to take the position of the opposite. In the best case, this

reinforces the identification with the entire company, as well as

the commitment of employees. Interdisciplinary teams are

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particularly strong when it comes to promoting innovation.

Especiall if marketeers and IT people work together, product

managers and customer support and exchange views and when

buyers and category managers are networking. They generate

ideas and push new developments. Above all, they find unusual

solutions, which feeds from the combination of different team

members. Interdsicplinary teams break silo-mentality but

require a lot of work, even when defining a project. Working in

those kind of teams is more challenging for every member. One

cannot assume preexisting knowledge as it usually can be

expected to be in homogeneous setups. In addition, sometimes

special technical expertise within a department can be lost

within interdisciplinary teams. Nevertheless, if team members

make each other stronger, most of the time one plus one equals

ten. However, sometimes, one and one equals zero, as they talk

past one another or old-fashioned cost-structers block the way

as illustrated in figure 2.

Figure 2: Cross-functional collaboration [13]

Lack of communication is often cited as the main reason for

intense silo thinking. Departments work side by side, hardly

cooperating without any overlaps. How can communication be

promoted? So far, team building measures, job rotation, social

intranet or interdisciplinary teams have been mentioned. It

might be helpful to set a strong set of rules or guidelines that

define processes more precisely and serve as a basis for all.

What are the communication channels, areas of responsibility

and who are authorities to give instructions? When should we

inform whom? In which cases which are the right persons to

contact? Which documents should we use when? The aim here

is a smooth interaction without misunderstandings. A set of

guidelines sets standards, creates transparency, facilitates

communication - and can be a building block when fighting

against silo thinking. In the authors point of view this approach

seems to be very suitable for companies situated in Germany

due to their culture and most of the time very traditional way of

working.

Finally, the most obvious aspect is a strong identification with

the company. If employees feel responsible for the success of

the company and only if, they care about it, they might be

willing to leave their well-known silos. For example, a coherent

corporate identity could help or a proclamation for brand

ambassadors, mentoring programs or employee advertising.

At the end there are approaches within IT and business units to

overcome their barriers within their units, but there is still little

attempt in breaking down the barriers between IT and business.

At the end of the day, crossfuntional collaboration should not

be a matter of discussion anymore. Instead, crossfunctional

collaboration needs to be an essential part of daily business.

The following chapter suggests possible aspects and methods,

which could be used to break down the last standing barriers.

4 Approach

It seems in many cases easer to think about how to prevent

collaboration between IT and business:

Different locations, facilities and spaces

Management does not align Business- and IT-Strategy

Management defines contradictory or conflicting

objectives for business and IT units

IT builds solutions without considering business

needs

Business units put together their own technical

solutions (e.g. BYOD, cloud solutions) and create a

shadow IT

etc.

The classic separation of business departments from IT

assumes that the business unit knows its business, creatively

opens up new business opportunities and creates business

value. Meanwhile IT is the supporting organ, which creates

systems needed for business processes.

Approaching these aspects and thinking in terms of how to

break the barriers not only within IT and business units but

between the two parties, one could think about BizDevOps

(Business, Development, Operations). BizDevOps is not rocket

sience.

BizDevOps describes a form of organization in which people

are grouped together in an agile team. They develop a viable

business model, create for example an application, operate it,

create specific requirements and further development happens

together. The team has overall responsibility for all areas and

there is no strict allocation of responsibilities within the team.

Within this approach, the business team sets requirements, but

they also work directly with developers “to set priorities for

agile software development sprints and backlogs. They become

partners with the business-side and work with managers to

solve problems and achieve business goals” [4]. Apparently, in

recent years, it appears that IT is increasingly becoming an

innovation driver and enabler. Business processes are

increasingly based 100% on IT, and technological advances are

more and more enabling new business models. In a BizDevOps

team it is possible to restore the innovative power of IT to

business departments and thus jointly create the most optimal

solutions.

A team that shares responsibility for a particular

professionalism is less likely to face the risk of mutual blame,

as it happens frequently in a separation of operations,

development, and business departments. In addition, the team

can also react flexibly - developers start operations, the

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business department handles IT tasks, and vice verca

developers can take on business department tasks. A certain

degree of fluctuation in the team is good in order to enable fresh

ideas, but a certain degree of stability is also extremely

important so that know-how is not being lost. Software

development usually takes place in projects. A project suggests

that there is an end, but that is not the case. There are bugfixes,

operations and advancements, and if at some point, the

application is actually removed, in almost all cases there will

be a new application or software that will do the job. This

pheonomenon is denoted as continuousX.

A BizDevOps team is responsible per definition for a particular

professionalism in the long run, even if applications come and

go. However, this approach should not only be used for

software development but also for new business services or

business models. Taylorism or tayloristic approach of

organizations, especially in German companies needs to stop,

because responsibility is forwarded too often, rather than

staying in one place, as shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: Organizational Structure with a taylorstical approach

BizDevOps as an organizational concept could and should be

used for a successful, efficient and sustainable realization of a

digitization strategy. This could lead to a reply to “my IT

department is too slow”. Hence, the focus is more on increasing

the value for the customer rather than on reducing costs.

BizDevOps make sense if:

Software does not only support the business, it is the

essential core of the business

Individual Software development and operations is

part of an organization

company and its culture support this approach

However, this approach can be also used in other areas outside

IT.

BizDevOps uses the “agile manifesto” [10]:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive

documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

For BizDevOps crossfunctional teams are needed. Not in the

traditional way, but rather in a divers way as shown in figure 4.

Figure 4 : Traditional teams and BizDevOps-Teams

According to a research by the Harvard Business Review 75%

of cross-funtional teams are dysfunctional, meaning that “They

fail on at least three of five criteria: 1) meeting a planned

budget; 2) staying on schedule; 3) adhering to specifications; 4)

meeting customer expectations; and/or 5) maintaining

alignment with the company’s corporate goals” [8]. The

researchers found that “Cross-functional teams often fail

because the organization lacks a systemic approach. Teams are

hurt by unclear governance, by a lack of accountability, by

goals that lack specificity, and by organizations’ failure to

prioritize the success of cross-functional projects” [8]. Hence,

a smart approach to cross-functional collaboration is needed.

Most of the time when people think of cross-functional teams,

they envision a team, which is made up of members of different

functional areas, as also shown in, figure 4.

This is per se not wrong, but job description is only one way to

show that people are divers. It also makes sense to create a team

that includes people who differ in gender, age, experience, skill,

location, seniority and engagement. Especially people with

engagement are often also seen as influencers within an

organization. Those individuals and their opinions are highly

regarded and they are trendsetters within a company and other

look to them for direction. Teams should make sure that they

are invovled in collaborative improvement efforts. Influencers

inspire others and increase their engagement.

Furthermore there are pople in organizations who know more

about particular processes, procedures, products and customers

than anyone else. Everyone turns to them when they need help

or have questions. In cross-functional teamwork they can help

getting problems solved and work done faster, but they also

offer an opportunity for valuable insights and information to be

spread.

Team collaboration usually resulst in a change. The impact of

that change on the organization should be measured. The best

way to get others excited about cross-functional teamwork is

by capturing and promoting these achievements.

Department’s goals should be aligned with the over-all

company objectives, so that everyone keeps rowing in the same

direction.

Last but not least one should keep in mind that not every cross-

functional team needs to be formally composed and managed.

Project Management Development

RequirementsEngineering

Software-development

Quality Management Deployment

Operations

Infrastructure/ Network

Security/ Compliance Operating Deployment

1st Level Support

Corporate Management

PurchasingDepartment

Marketing & Sales IT Production Administration

6 changes of responsibility are 5 changes to many?

Business RequirementEngineering

Software Development

Quality Management

Operations

Project ManagerProject-Team

Project-Team Project Manager

Traditional:

BizDevOps:

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Instead, random collaboration should be embraced. For

instance, serendipitous meetings in the hallway or café might

lead to an idea which results in a new product or service. That’s

the reason why companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and

others design their office spaces and break areas for the purpose

of encouraging people from different parts of the company to

bump into each other and chat.

However, cross-functional teams and collaboration should not

only happen by accident. Teams need to deal with new ideas

and trends by testing things and learn how to deal with try and

error constantly. Today consumers are much more situational

and faster than they used to be, which makes them less

predictable. Hence business and IT together need to react much

faster. Conventional, rigit production processes suddenly

collide with a lot of customer feedback. In order to avoid

frustration, agile methods are based on transparent, team-

coordinated processes with many intermediate steps or "small

step production", of which deviations may always be made if

necessary. Short revision loops and close coordination with

each other and with customers keep product development on

course. This flexibility empowers the team to be more

responsive to mistakes while still being able to develop the

product very close to the market.

Complex products or services require flexible working. But of

course one can not try out a new working methods for every

project out of pure desire for innovation. Agile working is

promising, especially when dealing with complex products. In

this case product requirements defined by users are very

different from the final version. Many requirements are still

unknown in the beginning and evolve in agile cycles. In the

author’s point of view, when it comes to complex products, the

development process suddenly raises questions that were not

asked before. Hence a lot of testing and trying out is required

in order to find quick answer.

Hence teams need a flexible working environment that enables

the necessary changes to be carried out quickly. Using agile

methods for quite some time helps the team. But when facing a

task of developing an extremely complex application for

example, a completely free-working team is required and

should be created. A team, which is not bound to organizational

structures. Let’s call it “The Squad”.

Meaning employees of a company should join forces, if needed

also with external specialists. All with different disciplines, so

that valuable perspectives and different know-how can be

incorporated into the development. The team should have the

space and the will to organize themselves without hierarchies,

act completely transparent, and create a spirit of a true

“engineering culture” or even “startup culture”. The goal is

right from the beginning to stimulate an open exchange so that

all ideas are being put forward and discussed further on. Each

member of the team should have an important role as a watcher,

so inconsistencies can be quickly recognized and resolved. The

whole team is responsible for mistakes of any individual. This

way of working can create positive pressure and encourage

people to work diligently. Feedback should be gratefully

received and seen as mutual help to improve.

A new team needs to deal with a finding or identification phase,

to figure out its vision and strategy. Therefore, it is advisable to

define objectives and rules during the first weeks. Most of the

time this early phase characterized as difficult, because

everyone takes on a different role even thou they are equitable.

Hence, it is normal if initially ideas differ greatly due to

differnet competences.

It is recommended to visualize vision, strategy as well as rules

and processes. One reliable tool is a Kanban Board, which

visualizes workflow [15]. This tool supports transparency,

which automatically results into commitment of individuals to

deliver reliable targeted results. Furthermore interim successes

are visible much earlier than in conventional working methods.

This may lead to an over all motivation and everyone can keep

a good eye on the common success.

One could think that smaller production steps would delay

product development, but the opposite is the case. The earlier a

product is tested for suitability, the easier it is to troubleshoot

and thus save money on the development process. This way of

working is also know as the “build measure learn loop” as

shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: The ‘Build, measure, learn’ loop [14]

If the Squad deletes inital models repeatedly, the team does not

fully understand the requirements. Testing and validating is

required to learn and to evolve ideas within the team. Many

components interact when creating a new product or service. If

a bug is discovered in one component at the end of a project, a

worst case scenario would be: all other features need at least

one improvement. This is very time-consuming and usually

costly. Therefore, in agile or startup working methods a product

or service undergoes a user test with different user scenarios in

regular, short intervals and the question should be: How well

does the user understand the product or service? In addition,

such scenarios can be simulated with collegues in customer

roles for instance. But also quality, look and user-friendliness

can be tested.

Last but not least the team needs to open up to failure. Focusing

on quick recovery is critical rather than preventing errors. Of

course there are more mistakes than within traditional working

methods, but they are considerably smaller and are positive and

therefore friendly adopted. This procedure eliminates costly

transfer phases. Companies can reduce their time spent in such

an engineering or startup culture by weeks because they work

much more often parallel, rather than waiting for the results of

a colleague to proceed to the next step.

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5 Conclusion & Outlook

CIOs have transformed IT departments from functional

institutions into agile service providers already for the last few

years. Even in traditional companies it has been recognized that

a fast reacting and flexible IT organization is needed. Therefore

agile methods and even concepts like DevOps, integrating the

development and operation of IT-services in common teams,

have been realized. But what can be observed nowadays is the

lack of new business models and the improper understanding

in business devisions about technological trends and the ways

customers would like to interact with them.

Within this paper the DevOps approach has been extended

towards the business devisions, building BizDevOps-teams. In

this way a cross-functional team can be established, integrating

different competencies and perspectives, all needed in new

disruptive markets. Due to the crossfunctional nature of these

teams, business devisions and business developers can

understand new technological trends and learn from their peer

team members how these technologies can be exploited to build

new products and services and how viable business models can

be established.

The neccessities and challenges within crossfunctional teams

are elaborated and some suggestions are given how to setup and

kickstart such teams in practice.

Based on these new teams companies can unleash unparalleld

potentials of spirit, knowledge and innovation, leading to

completly new ways of working. Out of this a disruptive

understanding of the workplace of the future, including smart

working in different contextes, embracing the freedom of mind,

could emerge, empowering individuals, teams and divisions to

join forces dynamically or on-demand, depending on the

necessities of the task at hand.

This could easily lead towards lean startup methods even in big

companies, think tank approaches or incubator models to drive

innovation. The combination of an on-demand spirit with new

ways of working could help empowering the mental and

creative power of all individuals, companies can gain by a

cultural change towards BizDevOps an unseen spirit and

innovative boost, needed for new markets in the 21st century.

6 References

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[4] Rouse, M., BizDevOps (Business, Development and Operations). Available: https://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/BizDevOps-Business-Development-and-Operations (2018, April 04).

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[8] Tabrizi, B., 75% of Cross-Functional Teams Are Dysfunctional. Available: https://hbr.org/2015/06/75-of-cross-functional-teams-are-dysfunctional (2018, April 13).

[9] Wolking, S., Silodenken: Wie Sie es aufbrechen. Available: https://karrierebibel.de/silodenken/ (2018, March 26).

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[11] Budiono, M., Mengenal “Silo Mentality”. Available: https://muhsinbudiono.com/2013/08/27/mengenal-silo-mentality/ (2018, March 28).

[12] Business Dictionary, Silo Mentality. Available: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/silo-mentality.html (2018, March 26).

[13] Fishburne, T., Cross-functional collaboration. Available: https://twitter.com/tomfishburne/status/607677719225069568 (2018, March 28).

[14] Gons, E., Validated Learning: The ‘Build, Measure, Learn’ loop. Available: https://blog.next.amsterdam/validated-learning-the-build-measure-learn-loop-a7b5dc730a73 (2018, April 17).

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