ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy, successfully concluded its India chapter of ThoughtWorks Live 2019 in Bengaluru on 28 November 2019. The event was an invite-only conclave specially designed for today’s digital CXO. The conclave hosted opinions and insights on the theme; Accelerating Digital Fluency. The day’s sessions discussed what it takes for businesses to not just become, but stay a digital course.

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This blog has a long-standing association with ThoughtWorks as it also had a detailed coverage of Technology Radar Summit by ThoughtWorks which was held in June 2019.

Why the delay in coverage of ThoughtWorks Live 2019?

You might be wondering what took us so long to cover the event on this blog? Since October 2019, I moved into technical and business writing and more time was spent on acquiring clients who could use our services. Though it is like a freelancer kind of a role, I would term myself as a rookie entrepreneur who is using his blogging and technical skills to enter into an entire new domain:). Watch out this blog where I would writing more about the transition from being an engineer to a so-called writer!

Coming back to ThoughtWorks Live 2019, the event was a wonderful opportunity for tech-enthusiasts to learn from industry experts and thought leaders in the industry. These folks shared their experiences of building Modern Digital Businesses. Since the theme of the event was Accelerating Digital Fluency, all the talks focused on building a digital mindset that is needed to create differentiated customer experiences.

ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – The attendees

Apart from selected journalists and technology bloggers, the event witnessed a total of 111 participants that also constituted industry experts like

  • Lathika Pai – Country Head, Microsoft for Start-Ups [Profile]
  • Dr. Vivek Raghavan – Chief Product Manager and Bio-metric Architect, UIDAI [Profile]
  • Jaspreet Bindra – Digital Transformation Advisor to ThoughtWorks [Profile]
  • Ashish Grover – VP – eCommerce, Falabella S.A, & Head of Technology, Falabella India [Profile]
  • Avinash Raghavendra – Executive Vice President & Head – Information Technology, Axis Bank [Profile]
  • Anil Kumble – Chairman, ICC Cricket Committee & Former Indian Cricketer [Needs no introduction 🙂]

Each of these thought leaders shared their their expertise & experiences on stage and it was an immense learning opportunity to all of us who were the ‘selected few’ to be invited for the event.

There were close to 100+ C-level customers of ThoughtWorks, prospects and analysts who shared exceptional feedback about the content, sessions, experience zone, and interactions with their leaders.

ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – Birds eye view of the event

The event started with keynote sessions by ThoughtWorks practitioners [Nag, Gunjan, and Gary], followed by a fireside chat [Avinash Raghavendra] and lightning talks by some of the eminent practitioners from the tech industry [Lathika Pai, Vivek Raghavan, Ashish Grover], followed by a panel on data moderated by Jaspreet Bindra and the last session was with Anil Kumble [Former Indian Cricketer in conversation with Smitha].

As the core focus was on Digital Transformation, there was extensive usage of the keywords in all the talks!

ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – Event Digest

The event was kicks-started with opening remarks from ThoughtWorkers – Gunjan Shukla, Market Partner – South East Asia, ThoughtWorks India, and Nagarjun Kandukuru, Business Principal – Artificial Intelligence.

Opening Remarks – ‘Digital an unkept Promise’

Below are some of the key takeaways from the insightful talk by the ThoughtWorkers who spoke about the prominence of Digital Transformation and why just building a mobile app cannot be termed as Digital Transformation.

  • Often businesses forget that ‘Digital’ and ‘Transformation’ are two separate words. Business leaders need to understand that ‘digitization’ is different from ‘digital transformation’. For instance, simply building a mobile app cannot count as a strategy anymore. You have to rethink how you manage demand, add value throughout the delivery cycle, and handle procurement or hiring. As a result, digital transformation is indistinguishable from business transformation.
  • Operating models aren’t keeping up with the demands of digital transformation. Legacy processes are deterring businesses from realizing the full potential of transformation. The key to effective transformation lies in shifting emphasis from profit/ROI maximization to client experience optimization, while putting power back in the hands of those who are creating solutions for your clients.
  • There are gaps between strategy and execution because ‘innovation’ and ‘scalability’ aren’t doing the Tango. Building teams that are capable of dealing with unpredictability, and driving inclusion [and not just diversity] can help address these gaps, because a good idea can come from anywhere.
  • Digital Transformation isn’t about becoming a faster caterpillar, rather the aim is to morph into a beautiful butterfly.

Do have a look at the insightful talk on ‘Digital an unkept Promise’ below:

The presentation on ‘Digital an unkept Promise’ is available here.

Keynote – Digital Fluency : ‘Connecting the Dots of Digital Transformation’

The next session was the keynote by Gary O’Brien, Principal Consultant & Organizational Designer, ThoughtWorks. His talk revolved around catering to the needs of the digital era and how to serve the modern digital businesses that are outcome-driven rather than output-driven.

  • The Digital Era is marked by three major shifts – heightened client expectations, speed and tech-driven value delivery.
  • Increasing client expectations requires businesses to develop ‘client obsession’ – that means aligning all practices and processes to create more value for your clients. Value is different from benefits, and it does not inherently exist in any business. You need to create value for your clients, and find ways to do so quickly, consistently and continuously.
  • Modern Digital Businesses are those that are outcome-driven rather than output-driven. One way to achieve outcome-orientation is to define your desired business outcomes first, then work backwards to identify measures of success, and design work to meet those measures.
  • It’s also critical to build a Test & Learn Culture that’s guided by capabilities, scalability and profitability. You can leverage knowledge to understand what ‘value’ means to your clients and use insights from data in a strategic manner to tell if your clients are responding to shifts in your offerings.
  • We’ve identified the five building blocks of a Modern Digital Business and our Digital Fluency Model was born out of the realization that not all businesses need to focus on all these blocks in equal measure. Your Digital Fluency is therefore aspirational – it’s where you are versus where you want to be; also, achieving this fluency is a non-linear process – you need to understand how investing in these blocks can maximize your client’s experience. Your fluency pattern is therefore your unique digital signature.
  • The Digital Fluency Model is our response to how digital transformation is being handled and spoken about in the market.

To summarize, Digital Fluency isn’t a race, rather its journey unique to every business.

Do have a look at the insightful talk on ‘Connecting the Dots of Digital Transformation’ below:

The presentation on ‘Digital Fluency – Connecting the Dots of Digital Transformation’ is available here.

Lightning Talk – India Stack : Driving Transformation Through Digital Public Goods

The session by Dr. Vivek Raghavan was by far one of the best sessions where  he spoke about the various aspects of the India Stack, financial inclusion, and UIDAI. Below are some of the key takeaways from his talk:

  • Moves in support of financial inclusion in India have seen acceleration due to increased political will, a proactive central bank, and ‘India Stack’, which refers to a set of technologies that address the three layers of financial inclusions – Identity, Payments and Data Empowerment.
  • These technologies and the supporting infrastructure were all built over time – a decade to be precise [2009 to 2019]. A verifiable unique identity was fundamental to enabling financial inclusion therefore it had to be backed bio-metrics, while also being simple. Aadhar aimed to give every Indian that unique identity using basic data – name, date of birth, gender, and phone/email.
  • While we have been successful in addressing Identity and Payments, data empowerment is still a challenge – users currently don’t have access to their own data. Account aggregators could restore the balance in the system by determining who stands to benefit from all this data. We are trying to drive the shift from using data to sell to the consumer to using data to empower the consumer.
The India Stack
How UPI Works

Every Indian is interested to know about Aadhar and how it has helped drive financial inclusion in India. This talk appeals to each one of us and should not be missed!

The presentation on ‘India Stack – Driving Transformation Through Digital Public Goods’ is available here.

Lightning Talk – Driving Digital Transformation by Leveraging Startup Innovations

Lathika Pai, Country Head, Microsoft for Startups, MENA & SAARC spoke about her journey as an entrepreneur, digital transformation, and Microsoft for Startups. Her talk will definitely appeal to anyone who has an inclination towards start-ups or who is interested in the overall eco-system.

Below are some of the key takeaways from Lathika Pai’s talk at ThoughtWorks Live 2019:

  • It is not about what technology can do, but what you can do with technology.
  • Disruption has become the norm across industries.
  • Two important constituents of Digital Transformation are empowering employees and engaging with clients.
  • The Indian Startup Ecosystem is vibrant, with 27 Unicorns in under 7 years. We have $51 billion in funding across 2773 funded startups.

Watch her entire session below:

The presentation on ‘Driving Digital Transformation by Leveraging Start-Up Innovations’ is available here.

Lightning Talk – Digital, The Great Leveller

Ashish Grover, VP – eCommerce, Falabella S.A and Head – Technology, Falabella India spoke about how going digital has created transparency in their business units, and enabled collaboration between geographically distributed teams.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the talk by Ashish Grover:

  • Falabella, a 130-year-old legacy integrated business with operations in retail, financial services marketplace, and real estate has been on a mission to optimize instant engagement at speed and scale.
  • Thanks to digital, geography is no longer a barrier, processes are more streamlined, speed is easier to achieve, and so is scale.
  • Through their transformation journey they have learned that empowering expertise is the answer to business woes. They look at it through the lenses of meritocracy, diversity, product thinking, aspiration and purpose. They’ve also paid attention to building feedback loops, simplifying processes, creating transparency and winning the support of leadership.

You can watch his entire session below:

The presentation on ‘Digital, the Great Leveller’ is available here.

Celebrity Chat

This was the moment that many of us in the crowd were waiting for! Being a die-hard cricketer myself, I have always admired Kumble’s bowling skills, especially the flipper. I have always admired him as a great cricketer and a coach that transformed the Indian cricket team.

Anil Kumble – Former Indian Cricketer spoke with Smitha Hemmigae, Head of Marketing – ThoughtWorks India about his cricketing and coaching journey and how digital technology can be leveraged more to improve the game.

Below are some of the key takeaways from Jumbo’s session:

  • Anil Kumble has seen multiple formats emerge and grow during his playing career and has excelled in all three cricketing formats – Tests, ODIs and T20. This session looked at Anil’s life and experiences through a digital lens.
  • When questioned about the rapid pace of change, in both cricket and business, Anil Kumble said tracking change is always overwhelming. Instead, simplifying things to look at constants helps him stay focussed – a great piece of advice for business leaders too.
  • In the context of his legendary performance in the India v/s Pakistan test match where he scored 10 wickets, he spoke about how one great performance can lead to heightened expectations. “You are only as good as your last game“, he said – perhaps another word of advice for business leaders. Much like cricket, business too demands consistency.

Anyone who has admired Anil Kumble’s bowling skills would definitely enjoy the session as he draws similarities between the game of cricket and business in this insightful session. A must watch…

Other than these sessions, there was a panel discussion on “The importance of Data” titled Data is not the new Oil. It is even more Powerful! The participants in the panel discussion were Hemant Misra, Head of Applied Research, Swiggy; N.S. Nappinai, Cyber laws Expert; Govind Shivkumar, Principal – Investments, Omidyar Network; Jaspreet Bindra, Digital Advisor & Blockchain Expert; Sudhir Tiwari, MD, ThoughtWorks India.

There was also an interesting Fireside Chat on the topic How to Accelerate Digital Fluency in Banking. Avinash Raghavendra, EVP & Head – IT, Axis Bank in conversation with Sandeep Reddy, Head of Financial Services Practice, ThoughtWorks India.

During the social gathering 13 distinguished analysts from Gartner, Forrester, Everest Research, ISG, Avasant, and HFS Research shared positive views on how ThoughtWorks Live is different from events by other service providers.

On the social media engagement front, the event received significant traction through the evening and was trending #1 in Bangalore and #15 in India. You can find the tweets on ThoughtWorks Live 2019 here.

ThoughtWorks Live 2019 – ‘Accelerate Your Digital Fluency’

Though we are late in writing about ThoughtWorks Live 2019, the learnings of the sessions will be applicable for many more years to come! So go ahead, and gain wonderful insights from the talks presented by the thought leaders present at ThoughtWorks Live 2019.

We look forward to be a part of ThoughtWorks Live 2020, till than good luck in your organization’s Digital Transformation journey!

The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. There needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking and dealing with disruptive changes in the business environment.

Enterprise Agility – Being Agile In A Changing World by Sunil Mundra presents a core belief that enterprises are open and living systems. And, these living systems, also known as Complex Adaptive Systems [CAS] are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively.

Given that, ‘agility is to enterprises what health is to humans,’ there are some foundational principles of good health that can be broadly applied. But, the specific definition of ‘being healthy’ for a specific individual can and will vary. Enterprise Agility puts forward a similar approach where foundational practices can improve the overall health of the ‘body’ – read, culture, mindset and leadership, and the health of its various ‘organs’ – read, people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers.

Image Source – Enterprise Agility

Enterprise Agility discusses how to avoid the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises, that focus on predictability and certainty. It also delivers practical advice on responding and adapting to scale, and disruption. The book goes on to suggest a practical framework with which leaders can create a plan to enhance agility. Today, we have a chat with Sunil about his book and his work with ThoughtWorks. So let’s get started with the Q&A…

Please talk about yourself, your association with ThoughtWorks [which is considered a leader when it comes to paired programming and other agile methodologies] and the learnings from that association ?

I have been with ThoughtWorks for eight years now. I have 28 years of experience, with 18 years in the IT industry and 10 years spent working with traditional businesses and startups.

My passion has been solving client problems. I am happy when I am working with leaders, understanding their problems and working at solving them. At ThoughtWorks, as a consultant, I have the room to do what I love. And, what’s interesting is the company does not expect me to accept a business issue as stated – I have the freedom to question and really dig deep and discover the true problem vs. symptoms of a business issue. Which lets me be extremely effective in my role!

I would say, ThoughtWorks’ niche is solving clients’ mission critical problems. And, my role in this process allowed me to learn about ‘Being Agile’ and ‘Business Agility’.

There are obvious learnings when one is working in an environment that believes in the power of its people; the knowledge workers and their knowledge work. Here, people pursue their passions [like myself] and are empowered. Also, ThoughtWorkers are true client partners and not people sitting on one side of the table. There is openness and transparency when working with clients, and all these progressive ‘habits’ are focussed on ensuring value to the client relationship.

Kindly give a small glimpse about your newly released book ‘Enterprise Agility’ and how can enterprises [SME’s, startups and huge corporations] incorporate the learnings into their development culture ?

The book, Enterprise Agility talks about how an organization needs to build capabilities that sense the fast changing environment and adapt, and respond to it.  And, that means the organization needs to function like a living entity – a Complex Adaptive System.

Today, most organizations have converted into or have become machines and are rooted in Frederick Taylor’s philosophy of separating the thinker and the doer –  focusing on efficiency and specialization. And, while that may have worked in an era when the market was stable, when the organization’s primary constraint was capacity, when everything that was produced was consumed. Clearly a seller’s market. But today it is very different. An organization has to adapt to change, when one cannot always and accurately anticipate the emergent future.

Sunil Mundra

For SMEs, startups and large corporations, the principle to ensuring agility stays the same – be focused on the customer and have an overarching purpose. By purpose, I mean the organization should enable a win-win with every stakeholder in the ecosystem – employees, customers, vendors, society etc. Once this purpose is defined, then we identify capabilities and draw out the strategy.

Businesses are changing at a breath-neck speed and in order to adapt, they need to be more agile [and same is applicable for their teams]. How can ‘Agile Methodologies’ be adopted in companies with large-scale teams [business, development, testing, etc.] since they are more resistant to openness and change ?

Agile has its origins in software development, and the underlying methodologies are designed to improve effectiveness and efficiency of software delivery. What is often forgotten is that agile is not just about ‘doing’ the practices, but about ‘being’ agile, i.e. about a mindset and culture which is focused on achieving the desired outcomes. And, practices which lead to collaboration, timely and effective communication, ensuring visibility and transparency support this culture.

Let’s look at an example of distributed development which has its pain points depending on where the teams are sitting – different floors, geographies, time zones, across different cultures or even across organizations. The complexity increases alongside the increasing variables. Here, agile practices, processes and techniques can help alleviate pain points by enabling the needed mindset or culture change.

The wrong way to go about things is ‘doing’ agile without understanding why or its value. That leads to no sustainable benefit, not unlike the waterfall methodology which requires following a preset process. Agile, in comparison has more to do with ‘knowledge work’, and places prime importance on the people on the ground – the most powerful in the hierarchy. This means, while the traditional model has a worker and a manager to manage the worker, and a senior manager to manage the manager, and a vice president to manage the senior manager – it’s actually the information the worker is sending up that defines business strategy. Now, this requires that the manager should stop [traditionally managing or] directing and be a facilitator and enabler.

Whether a business is large or small, it must create cross functional and autonomous teams that are organized around outcomes and supported by the right mindset and culture across the entire enterprise.

How can companies already following ‘Agile approach’ take the next leap and move to ‘Enterprise Agility’ for better productivity and employee management [and engagement] ? Also, how can an enterprise agility mindset help get the most out of distributed teams [that are spread across different countries with time-zone difference] ?

Agility is a set of capabilities that help an organization deliver value. Agility can exist at enterprise level or even within smaller units of the enterprise, where people work on input to create something of value. [In comparison, agile is more focussed on the software development process].

Expanding on agility, there are three basic capabilities [in no particular order] it is defined by.  One is the ability to sense the environment, second is the ability to adapt and third is the ability to respond. However, enterprises may need additional capabilities which enable their agility. For example, Apple, also considered a master of innovation would call ‘being innovative’ a desired capability. For an organization that produces something in mass numbers, efficiency could be a capability.

This is also a key takeaway from my book where I talk about how every organization has to come up with a set of capabilities [specific to their context] that improves agility.

Please walk us through Complex Adaptive Systems [CAS] model and how the model can be used to enhance enterprise agility ?

Let me begin with an example. Nokia was a leader in the mobile handset space.  But, Apple’s iPhone, a smartphone with apps came to market and changed the status quo. Evidently, Nokia had become complacent and had failed to sense the change in the environment, in customer mindset/expectations and failed to respond to it. A similar story is of Kodak’s and the digital revolution – when they were the ones that invented the digital camera.  But, the technology was raw and they had failed to sense the potential opportunity.

In comparison, natural and socio-economic systems have been adapting and evolving. For example, transportation was predominantly animal-bound, then came vehicles that run on fuel and now, we are moving into an age of electric vehicles and soon it will be self-driven cars. Another example is human beings. We began as apes and today, we are a jumble of several races. We had a tail that we gave up as part of our physical evolution. And, like all Complex Adaptive Systems, we are still evolving and geared to improve the chances of survival.

Some characteristics of these systems include having agents that are autonomous in nature – mostly free but bound by some basic rules. For example, the traffic system is bound by some basic rules like red means stop, drive on one side of the road, use an indicator when making a turn and more. And, the ‘free agents’ are the make of the car, the route you take, the speed you drive at etc. The objective is to get from one place to the other with a fair amount of freedom.

When such freedom exists, there is value created from the interacting between agents. This calls for flexibility because detailed plans can quickly become obsolete in such environments. Meaning, something new emerges and the CAS has to figure out what to do next – evolve and adapt.

How can your book ‘Enterprise Agility’ be of help to an entrepreneur leading an early-stage or a growth stage startup ?

Startups by definition have greater agility, are usually based on a purpose that the founders passionately believe in, and are smaller during their initial stages. I would advise startups is to avoid scaling the based-on-enterprise principles of Taylorism, and ensure their purpose creates the ‘win-win’ for all stakeholders. Another key advice would be to build teams that are outcome driven.

Many companies have stringent policies, mindset, culture and once they adapt to change [by embracing agile], there would be a tendency to measure the ROI [either in terms of bug inflow, man hours reduction, etc.], how can ROI be measured for adoption of ‘Agile’ or ‘Enterprise Agile’ approach ?

Let’s explain this with an analogy – how would one measure the ROI of being healthy?  One can’t.  The investment could be calculated on gym membership fees, organic food etc. But, how would one calculate the returns of feeling healthy and having avoided disease?

That is how it is with agility.  Agility is the health of the company and it’s hard to calculate the returns. How would one calculate the cost of something that has not happened or the benefit of something bad that has been avoided.

Enterprises continue to practice such anti-patterns. For example, if the company is doing financially well, the assumption is that they are successful. But, the fact could be that the enterprise is slowing drowning because they are not ready for change. And, eventually, it’s only when organizations are in crisis are they ready to embrace change.

Can agile approach be applied to Product companies/Startups [Products which are in the Hardware space e.g. mobiles, e-scooters, etc.] where dependencies are on hardware, software, OEM’s, board manufacturers and what are some approaches that leaders can follow in order to bring-in agile mindset in product organizations [not pure software/SAAS based products] ?

Being agile ensures an environment in which people are given the most importance, because they are the thinking, living and breathing free agents who do the knowledge work. And, this is applicable to all types of organizations.

Toyota is a great example of applying agile principles to a manufacturing activity. Every worker is free to validate a problem that they see in the production line, with their manager, but they are equally empowered to pull the cord that stops the entire production line when they see an obvious problem on the line. This is an example of having a process but empower the people to break that process, if needed, in pursuit of the right outcome.

And, this is connected to one of the agile principles that talks motivated individuals, and that’s especially important when living in the knowledge world. This is because, a lot of jobs that we used to do can be done by machines. Software has so many tools that has automated several parts of software development. And, this has freed up the human brain for bolder creativity and expression.

In effect, I believe that agile principles can be applied beyond the scope of software development. The processes, techniques, standup meetings, MVP etc. are all about delivering an outcome that pleases the customer and harnesses the potential of motivated employees to the fullest, within the framework of appropriate governance, and intelligently planned innovation and experimentation.

Before we sign-off, please let us know the intended audience of the book ‘Enterprise Aglity’ i.e. whether it could be engineers, team leaders, team managers, CXO’s, etc. ?

Enterprise Agility is intended to be more thought provoking for leaders, rather than a step-by-step prescriptive playbook. My goal is to make a leader or influencer say, “Oh, I didn’t think of it like that! And, I see it’s relevance for my enterprise.”

We thank Sunil Mundra for sharing his insights with our readers. If you have any questions for him about agile programming, his new book, application of agile for distributed teams, etc. please email them here or share them via a comment to this article.