Build the cloud adoption plan is the pillar for companies digital transformation. If we have success to determine the motivations, measure the facts and tangible & intangible value, and alignment with the business outcomes, ROI and expectations we are on the road. Now is time to understand how we can achieve those goals.

Cloud Adoption Plan (MS) or Action Plan (AWS) must be feasible, what a challenge!.

So it´s the time to gather all the information previously collected and add some specific information about the first workloads related to current TCO, future ROI and its technical expectations or process changes, skills to be updated and shape some data coming from interviews and the legacy applications to transform to get the perfect plan.

Let start first on the Amazon approach to run their Action Plan. To recap AWS have six key perspectives with its corresponding roles:

• Business Perspective: Business Managers, Finance,Managers, Budget Owners, Strategy Stakeholders.
• People Perspective: Human Resources, Staffing, Managers, People Managers.
• Governance Perspective: Chief Information Officer, (CIO), Program Managers, Project Managers, Enterprise Architects, Business Analysts, Portfolio Managers.
• Platform Perspective: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), IT Managers, Solution Architects.
• Security Perspective: Chief Information Security Officer, (CISO), IT Security Managers, IT Security Analysts.
• Operations Perspective: IT Operations Managers, IT Support Managers

From all these roles mainly your audience in the cloud journey and depending on the vertical are finance or purchase department, Hr, CIO and somehow CISO (if exists, as Small and Medium businesses, SMBs , don´t use to have such role specific for security. At least in Southern Europe..;-)

What happens with the CEO?…if you reach out to the CEO on this plan it´s not very common, let´s say..and they don´t have time to face with these strategies at least when you are just heating up motors. But in terms of alignment it would be perfect have his attention from scratch.

So suppose we have launched the action plan template for each perspective (remember you have to do it for the six) in terms of actions to be done related to each skill or process that requires updating. So you fill out the cells according skills or processes that you need to update to address those questions or concerns collected previously.

AWS recommends action statements should begin with a verb. Actions to update skills usually start with “learn”, “investigate” or “train.” Actions to update processes usually start with “create”, “update,” “develop” or “reevaluate.

If you pay attention, work streams are nothing but a predefined way of work based on the processes that people are following daily in the customer´s company and the skills they have to afford it. When you have filled out the six action plan templates, you should have very clear the interdependence between work streams on the same perspective or even on that one together with others.

So how can we have the right work streams for the several perspectives. In this post we are going over the first 3 which are more related to business areas. Let´s go with the business one.

Business Perspective: This perspective is focused on ensuring that IT technology with respond to business needs. In terms of saving cost or in terms of bring some innovation or accelerate productivity for example improving mobility, remote work or reducing the current process path to be more efficient.

Finance or the CFO look for specific goals to be aligned in this perspective:

• Consumption-based pricing model. OPEX versus CAPEX transition.
• A tracking tool or console to forecast and identify consumption details.
• A clear TCO / ROI evaluation.
• Required skills to be updated for the purchase department or the budget Owners.
• Clear strategy to reduce risk on the investment to replace obsolete technologies, eliminate silos or change the image as poor innovation company to a digital leader. So you address the right budget for each workload you want to transform.
• Related to these, there are six Rs migration Strategies. So for Finance when the application is going to be Retain or Retire (1 or 2), there is no impact for the business perspective. But instead, Rehost, Replatform, Refactor or Rearchitect means for the Finance guys and the CFO itself a budget which will be increasing depending on the R that you choose. (3 to 6). Where Rehost or Replatform is less expensive and Refactor o Rearchitect will be more expensive and means more budget.

People Perspective: This perspective address all related to workforce upskilling and structural role changes to manage new processes and work stream more collaborative or efficient within the company.

HR look for specific goals to be aligned in this perspective:

• Identify new roles and organizational structure changes.
• Hire Talent and support in the career management.
• Prioritize training and organize a clear road map for them during the digital transformation.
• Prepare and communicate the changes through events, collaborative sites with tips and videos, etc.
• Resolve gaps and maximize effort for the cloud adoption in terms of people.
• Sponsor motivate readiness to the employees and marketing campaigns if needed.
• Related to six Rs migration Strategies for the HR when the application is going to be Retain or Retire (1 or 2), there is no impact as well. But instead, Rs from 3 to 6 means, like Rehost or Replatform, more knowledge and some operational and support challenge and Refactor o Rearchitect will be clearly a challenge in terms of skilling people to understand and manage PaaS, FaaS or Serverless operations, but less support and maintenance.

Governance Perspective: This perspective is all about prioritize and take control tasks needed to shape the IT strategy goals and the business strategy goals. Let say it is like driving a car where you are the driver and wants an steady speed during tour trip and enough space for your suitcases in the boot of the car.

Governance look for specific goals to be aligned in this perspective:

• Portfolio management in terms of organization capabilities to align projects and IT investments with business goals. So you can prioritize those more urgent to be transform to compete with other companies in your area or rivals. For example, in retail in the last years there are a new relation with customers selling online. If your company is not doing the right movement to provide a shopping online platform may be you lost market and even more with the Covid impact on our society.
• Be ready to provide a PMO or a project management for new and in same cases disruptive technologies. So your PMs need more knowledge and skill to understand risk, delays or requirements for the digital transformation.
• Prepare specific KPI for measuring new public cloud capabilities as automation, resilience, escalation to know where we are and how we can face with any critic downtime or an on demand unplanned requests for our products.

We have seen the first 3 AWS perspectives more focus on business areas within a company in this post. In the coming one, we will go in depth with the 3 related to technical areas of our company and how they are affected.

Enjoy the journey to the cloud with me…see you in the next post.