The corridors of companies today are filled with buzzwords like DevOps, continuous delivery and multi-speed delivery. But if you ask more precisely what they mean, you will quickly find that only a few people who use these terms can make a direct, practical reference to their own company. Even in the executive offices of these companies, it is still difficult to derive suitable definitions for them and their practical applicability to the business at hand.
Multi-speed delivery is one of those buzz words. When it comes to multi-speed IT delivery, we often hear platitudes about putting customer enthusiasm before shareholder returns and about the beauty of company-wide agility and the nobility of self-organized, self-responsible product teams.
Though at first this may sound simple, in reality it involves great complexity in terms of organizational, operational and governance models, and it presents significant challenges to a company’s willingness and readiness to change. We find very different interpretations of multi-speed delivery from company to company and even within a single company.
In fast-moving and digitally enabled business ecosystems and platforms, organizations need new ways of working that complement the traditional waterfall methodology. They need to demonstrate flexibility and responsiveness to regulatory and fiscal requirements and to rapidly changing customer requirements.
This ISG white paper explores how can we combine the "new" and the "traditional" in a meaningful way without creating major construction sites elsewhere in the company.
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