The Accessibility Business Case for IT

Accessibility goes beyond compliance

Analyst Perspective

Avoid tech debt related to accessibility barriers

Accessibility is important for individuals, businesses, and society. Diverse populations need diverse access, and it’s essential to provide access and opportunity to everyone, including people with diverse abilities. In fact, access to information and communications technologies (ICT) is a basic human right according to the United Nations.

The benefits of ICT accessibility go beyond compliance. Many innovations that we use in everyday life, such as voice activation, began as accessibility initiatives and ended up creating a better lived experience for everyone. Accessibility can improve user experience and satisfaction, and it can enhance your brand, drive innovation, and extend your market reach (WAI, 2022).

Although your organization might be required by law to ensure accessibility, understanding your users’ needs and incorporating them into your processes early will determine success beyond just compliance.

Heather Leier-Murray
Senior Research Analyst, People and Leadership
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

1. Harvard Business Review, 2021

Info-Tech Insight
The longer you put off accessibility, the more tech debt you accumulate and the more you risk losing access to new and existing markets. The longer you wait to adopt standards and best practices, the more interest you’ll accumulate on accessibility barriers and costs for remediation.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations who are looking to:

• Build a business case for accessibility.
• Ensure that digital assets, products, and services are accessible to everyone, internally and externally.
• Support staff and build skills to support the organization with accessibility and accommodation.
• Get assistance figuring out where to start on the road to accessibility compliance and beyond.

The cost of inaction related to accessibility is rising. Preparing for accessibility earlier helps prevent tech debt; the longer you wait to address your accessibility obligations, the more costly it gets.

More than 3,500 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in the US in 2020, up more than 50% from 2018.

Source: UsableNet. Inc.

Common obstacles

These barriers make accessibility difficult to address for many organizations:

• You don’t know where your gaps in understanding are. Recognizing the importance of accessibility and how it fits into the bigger picture is key to developing buy-in.
• Too often organizations focus on mitigating risk by being compliance driven. Shifting focus to the user experience, internally and externally, will realize better results.
• Conventional approaches to accessibility often fail because the expectation is for users to do the hard work. One in five people have a permanent disability, but it’s likely everyone will be faced with some sort of disability at some point in their lives.¹ Your organization has to be doing at least 80% of the hard work.²
• Other types of compliance reside clearly with one area of the organization. Accessibility, however, has many homes: IT, user experience (UX), customer experience (CX), and even HR.

1. Smashing Magazine

2. Harvard Business Review, 2021

90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2020

Only 4% of those that claim to prioritize diversity consider disability in those initiatives.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2020

The four principles of accessibility

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) identifies four principles of accessibility. WCAG is the most referenced standard in website accessibility lawsuits.

Source: eSSENTIAL Accessibility, 2022

Why organizations address accessibility

Top three reasons:

Source: Level Access

Still, most businesses aren’t meeting compliance standards. Even though legislation has been in place for over 30 years, a 2022 study by WebAIM of 1,000,000 homepages returned a 96.8% WCAG 2.0 failure rate.

Source: Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice

How organizations prioritize digital accessibility

43% rated it as a top priority.

36% rated it as important.

Fewer than 5% rated as either low priority or not even on the radar.

More than 65% agreed or strongly agreed it’s a higher priority than last year.

Source: Angel Business Communications

Organizations expect consumers to do more online

The pandemic led to many businesses going digital and more people doing things online.

Source: Statistics Canada

Disability is part of being human

Merriam-Webster defines disability as a “physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person’s ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions.”¹

The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that a crucial part of the definition of disability is that it’s not just a health problem, but the environment impacts the experience and extent of disability. Inaccessibility creates barriers for full participation in society.²

The likelihood of you experiencing a disability at some point in your life is very high, whether a physical or mental disability, seen or unseen, temporary or permanent, severe or mild.²

Many people acquire disabilities as they age yet may not identify as “a person with a disability.”³ Where life expectancies are over 70 years of age, 11.5% of life is spent living with a disability. ⁴

“Extreme personalization is becoming the primary difference in business success, and everyone wants to be a stakeholder in a company that provides processes, products, and services to employees and customers with equitable, person-centered experiences and allows for full participation where no one is left out.”
– Paudie Healy, CEO, Universal Access

1. Merriam-Webster
2. World Health Organization
3. Digital Leaders, as cited in WAI, 2018
4. Disabled World, as cited in WAI, 2018

Untapped talent resource

Common myths about people with disabilities:

• They can’t work.
• They need more time off or are absent more often.
• Only basic, unskilled work is appropriate for them.
• Their productivity is lower than that of coworkers.
• They cost more to recruit, train, and employ.
• They decrease others’ productivity.
• They’re not eligible for governmental financial incentives (e.g. apprentices).
• They don’t fit in.

These assumptions prevent organizations from hiring valuable people into the workforce and retaining them.

Source: Forbes

50% to 70% of people with disabilities are unemployed in industrialized countries. In the US alone, 61 million adults have a disability.

Source: United Nations, as cited in Forbes

Info-Tech’s methodology for the accessibility business case for IT

Insight Summary

1. WAI, 2018

Blueprint deliverables

This blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

Accessibility Business Case Template

The business case for accessibility is strong. Use this template to communicate to senior leaders the benefits and challenges of accessibility and the risks of inaction.

Accessibility Maturity Assessment

Use this assessment to understand your current accessibility maturity.

Blueprint benefits

Measure the value of this blueprint

Improve stakeholder satisfaction and engagement

• Tracking measures to understand the value of this blueprint is a critical part of the process.
• Monitor employee engagement, overall stakeholder satisfaction with IT, and the overall end-customer satisfaction.
• Remember, accessibility is not a one-and-done project – just because measures are positive does not mean your work is done.

In phase 2 of this blueprint, we will help you establish current-state and target-state metrics for your organization.

Suggested Metrics
Overall end-customer satisfaction
Monies saved through cost optimization efforts
Employee engagement
Monies save through application rationalization and standardization

For more metrics ideas, see the Info-Tech IT Metrics Library.

Executive Brief Case Study

INDUSTRY
Technology

SOURCE
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 2018

Google

Investing in accessibility
With an innovative edge, Google invests in accessibility with the objective of making life easier for everyone. Google has created a broad array of accessibility innovations in its products and services so that people with disabilities get as much out of them as anyone else.

Part of Google’s core mission, accessibility means more to Google than implementing fixes. It is viewed positively by the organization and drives it to be more innovative to make information available to everyone. Google approaches accessibility problems not as barriers but as ways to innovate and discover breakthroughs that will become mainstream in the future.

Results
Among Google’s innovations are contrast minimums, auto-complete, voice-control, AI advances, and machine learning auto-captioning. All of these were created for accessibility purposes but have positively impacted the user experience in general for Google.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 4 to 6 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

Understand Your Current State

Phase 1
1.1 Understand standards and legislation
1.2 Build awareness
1.3 Understand maturity level

Phase 2
2.1 Define desired future state
2.2 Define goals and objectives
2.3 Document roles and responsibilities

Phase 3
3.1 Prepare business case template for presentation and approval
3.2 Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

The Accessibility Business Case for IT

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Identifying and understanding accessibility and compliance requirements and the ramifications of noncompliance.
• Defining accessibility, disability, and disability inclusion and building awareness of these with senior leaders.
• Completing the Accessibility Maturity Assessment to help you understand your current state.

Step 1.1

Understand standards and legislation

Activities

1.1.1 Make a list of the legislation you need to comply with

1.1.2 Seek legal and/or professional services’ input on compliance

1.1.3 Detail the risks of inaction for your organization

Understand Your Current State

Outcomes of this step
You will gain foundational understanding of the breadth of the regulation requirements for your organization. You will have reviewed and understand what is applicable to your organization.

The regulatory landscape is evolving

Canada

• Canadian Human Rights Act
• Policy on Communications and Federal Identity
• Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
• Accessible Canada Act of 2019 (ACA)

Europe

• UK Equality Act 2010
• EU Web and Mobile Accessibility Directive (2016)
• EN 301 549 European Standard – Accessibility requirements for public procurement of ICT products and services

United States

• Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)
• Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
• Air Carrier Access Act of 1986
• 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA)

New Zealand

• Human Rights Act 1993
• Online Practice Guidelines for Government

Australia

• Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA)

Regulatory systems are moving toward an international standard.

1.1.1 Make a list of the legislation you need to comply with

1. Download the Accessibility Business Case Template.
2. Conduct research and investigate what legislation and standards are applicable to your organization.

a)	Start by looking at your local legislation.
b)	Then consider any other regions you conduct business in.
c)	Also account for the various industries you are in.

3. While researching, build a list of legislation requirements. Document these in your Accessibility Business Case Template as part of the Project Context section.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

1.1.2 Seek professional advice on compliance

1. Have general counsel review your list of regulations and standards related to accessibility or seek legal and/or professional support to review your list.
2. Review or research further the implications of any suggestions from legal counsel.
3. Make any updates to the Legal Landscape slide in the Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Ramifications of noncompliance

Go beyond financial consequences

Beyond the costs resulting from a claim, noncompliance can damage your organization in several ways.

Source: May Hopewell

In the last four years, 83% of the retail 500 have been sued. Since 2018, 417 of the top 500 have received ADA-based digital lawsuits.

Source: UsableNet

1.1.3 Detail the risks of inaction for your organization

1. Using the information that you’ve gathered through your research and legal/professional advice, detail the risks of inaction for your organization.

a)	Consider legal risks, consumer risks, brand risks, and employee risks. (Remember, risks aren’t just monetary.)

2. Document the risks in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Step 1.2

Build awareness of accessibility and disability inclusion

Activities

1.2.1 Identify gaps in understanding

1.2.2 Brainstorm how to reframe accessibility positively

Understand Your Current State

Outcomes of this step
You’ll have a better understanding of accessibility so that you can effectively implement and promote it.

Where to look for understanding

First-hand experience of how people with disabilities interact with your organization is often eye-opening. It will help you understand the benefits and value of accessibility.

Where to look for understanding

• Talk with people you know with disabilities that are willing to share.*
• Find role-specific training that’s appropriate.
• Research. Articles and videos are easy to find.
• Set up assistive technology trials.
• Seek out first-hand experience from people with disabilities and how they work and use digital assets.

Source: WAI, 2016

* Remember, people with disabilities aren't obligated to discuss or explain their disabilities and may not be comfortable sharing. If you're asking for their time, be respectful, only ask if appropriate, and accept a "no" answer if the person doesn't wish to assist.

1.2.1 Identify gaps in understanding

Find out what accessibility is and why it is important. Learn the basics.

1. Using the information that you’ve gathered through your research and legal counsel, conduct further research to understand the importance of accessibility.
2. Answer these questions:

a)	What is accessibility? Why is it important?
b)	From the legislation and standards identified in step 1.1, what gaps exist?
c)	What is the definition of disability?
d)	How does your organization currently address accessibility?
e)	What are your risks?
f)	Do you have any current employees who have disabilities?

3. Review the previous slide for suggestions on where to find more information to answer the above questions.
4. Document any changes to the risks in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Reframe accessibility as a benefit, not a burden

A clear understanding of accessibility and the related standards and regulations can turn accessibility from something big and scary to an achievable part of the business.

The benefits of accessibility are:

Source 1: WAI, 2018

1.2.2 Brainstorm ways to reframe accessibility positively

1. Using the information that you’ve gathered through your research, brainstorm additional positives of accessibility for your organization.
2. Clearly identify the problem you want to solve (e.g., reframing accessibility positively in your organization).
3. Collect any tools you want to use to during brainstorming (e.g., whiteboard, markers, sticky notes)
4. Write down all the ideas that come to mind.
5. Review all the points and group them into themes.
6. Update the Accessibility Business Case Template with your findings.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Make it part of the conversation

A first step to disability and accessibility awareness is to talk about it. When it is talked about as freely as other things are in the workplace, this can create a more welcoming workplace.

Accessibility goes beyond physical access and includes technological access and support as well as our attitudes.

Accessibility is making sure everyone (disabled or abled) can access the workplace equally.

Adjustments in the workplace are necessary to create an accessible and welcoming environment. Understanding the three dimensions of accessibility in the workplace is a good place to start.

Source: May Hopewell

Three dimensions of accessibility in the workplace

Case Study

INDUSTRY
Professional Services

SOURCE
Accenture

Accenture takes an inclusive approach to increase accessibility.

Step 1.3

Understand your current accessibility maturity level

Activities

1.3.1 Complete the Accessibility Maturity Assessment

Understand Your Current State

Outcomes of this step
Completed Accessibility Maturity Assessment to inform planning for and building your business case in Phases 2 and 3.

Know where you are to know where to go

Consider accessibility improvements from three interconnected aspects to determine current maturity level

Accessibility Maturity

People

• Consider employee, customer, and user experience.

Process

• Review processes to ensure accessibility is considered early.

Technology

• Whether it’s new or existing, technology is an important tool to increase accessibility.

Accessibility maturity levels

Determine your level of maturity

Use Info-Tech’s Accessibility Maturity Assessment

• On the accessibility questionnaire, tab 2, choose how much the statements apply to your organization. Answer the questions based on your knowledge of your current state organizationally.
• Once you’ve answered all the questions, see the results on the tab 3, Accessibility Results. You can see your overall maturity level and the maturity level for each of six dimensions that are necessary to increase the success of an accessibility program.
• Click through to tab 4, Recommendations, to see specific recommendations based on your results and proven research to progress through the maturity levels. Keep in mind that not all organizations will or should aspire to the “Optimize” maturity level.

1.3.1 Complete the Accessibility Maturity Assessment

1. Download the Accessibility Maturity Assessment and save it with the date so that as you work on your accessibility program, you can reassess later and track your progress.
2. Once you have saved the assessment, select the appropriate answer for each statement on tab 2, Accessibility Questions, based on your knowledge of the organization’s approach.
3. After reviewing all the accessibility statements, see your maturity level results on tab 3, Accessibility Results. Then see tab 4, Recommendations, for suggestions based on your answers.
4. Document your accessibility maturity results in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Phase 2

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Phase 1
1.1 Understand standards and legislation
1.2 Build awareness
1.3 Understand maturity level

Phase 2
2.1 Define desired future state
2.2 Define goals and objectives
2.3 Document roles and responsibilities

Phase 3
3.1 Prepare business case template for presentation and approval
3.2 Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

The Accessibility Business Case for IT

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Defining your desired future state.
• Determining your accessibility program goals and objectives.
• Clarifying and documenting roles and responsibilities related to accessibility in IT.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Project lead/sponsor
• IT leadership team
• Senior leaders/decision makers

Step 2.1

Define the desired future state of accessibility

Activities

2.1.1 Identify key stakeholders

2.1.2 Hold a key stakeholder focus group

2.1.3 Conduct a future-state analysis

Outcomes of this step
Following this step, you will have identified your aspirational maturity level and what your accessibility future state looks like for your organization.

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Cheat sheet: Identify stakeholders

Ask stakeholders, “Who else should I be talking to?” to discover additional stakeholders and ensure you don’t miss anyone.

Categorize your stakeholders with a stakeholder prioritization map

A stakeholder prioritization map helps teams categorize their stakeholders by their level of influence and ownership.

There are four areas in the map, and the stakeholders within each area should be treated differently.

Players – Players have a high interest in the initiative and the influence to effect change over the initiative. Their support is critical, and a lack of support can cause significant impediment to the objectives.

Mediators – Mediators have a low interest but significant influence over the initiative. They can help to provide balance and objective opinions to issues that arise.

Noisemakers – Noisemakers have low influence but high interest. They tend to be very vocal and engaged, either positively or negatively, but have little ability to enact their wishes.

Spectators – Generally, spectators are apathetic and have little influence over or interest in the initiative.

Define strategies for engaging stakeholders by type

Each group of stakeholders draws attention and resources away from critical tasks.

By properly identifying your stakeholder groups, you can develop corresponding actions to manage stakeholders in each group. This can dramatically reduce wasted effort trying to satisfy Spectators and Noisemakers while ensuring the needs of the Mediators and Players are met.

2.1.1 Identify key stakeholders

Collect this information by:

1. List direct stakeholders for your area. Include stakeholders across the organization (both IT and business units) and externally.
2. Create a stakeholder map to capture your stakeholders’ interest in and influence on digital accessibility.
3. Shortlist stakeholders to invite as focus group participants in activity 2.1.2.
   • Aim for a combination of Players, Mediators, and Noisemakers.

Hold a focus group to initiate planning

Involve key stakeholders to determine the organizational drivers of accessibility, identify target maturity and key performance indicators (KPIs), and ultimately build the project charter.

Building the project charter as a group will help you to clarify your key messages and secure buy-in from critical stakeholders up-front, which is key.

Executing the business case for accessibility requires significant involvement from your IT leadership team. The challenge is that accessibility can be overwhelming because of inherent bias. Members of your IT leadership team will also need to participate in knowledge transfer, so get them involved up-front. The focus group will help stakeholders feel more engaged in the project, which is pivotal for success.

You may feel like a full project charter isn’t necessary, and depending on your organizational size, it might not be. However, the exercise of building the charter is important regardless. No matter your current climate, some level of socializing the value of and plans for accessibility will be necessary.

Meeting Agenda

1. Short introduction
   Led by: Project Sponsor
   • Why the initiative is being considered.
2. Make the case for the project
   Led by: Project Manager
   • Current state: What does the initiative address?
   • Future state: What is our target state of maturity?
3. Success criteria
   Led by: Project Manager
   • How will success be measured?
4. Define the project team
   Led by: Project Manager
   • Description of planned approach.
   • Stakeholder assessment.
   • What is required of the sponsor and stakeholders?
5. Determine next steps
   Led by: Project Manager

2.1.2 Hold a stakeholder focus group

Identify the pain points you want to resolve and some of the benefits that you’d like to see from a program. By doing so, you’ll get a holistic view of what you need to achieve and what your drivers are.

1. Ask the working group participants (as a whole or in smaller groups) to discuss pain points created by inaccessibility.
   • Challenges related to stakeholders.
   • Challenges created by process issues.
   • Difficulties improving accessibility practices.
2. Discuss opportunities to be gained from improving these practices.
3. Have participants write these down on sticky notes and place them on a whiteboard or flip chart.
4. Review all the points as a group. Group challenges and benefits into themes.
5. Have the group prioritize the risks and benefits in terms of what the solution must have, should have, could have, and won’t have.

While defining future state, consider your drivers

The Info-Tech Accessibility Maturity Framework identifies three key strategic drivers: compliance, experience, and incorporation.

• Over 30% of organizations are focused on compliance, according to a 2022 survey by Harvard Business Review and Slack’s Future Forum. The survey asked more than 10,000 workers in six countries about their organizations’ approach to DEI.²

Even though 90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity,¹ over 30% are focused on compliance.²

1. Harvard Business Review, 2020
2. Harvard Business Review, 2022

31.6% of companies remain in the Compliant stage, where they are focused on DEI compliance and not on integrating DEI throughout the organization or on creating continual improvement.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2022

Align the benefits of program drivers to organizational goals or outcomes

Although there will be various motivating factors, aligning the drivers of your accessibility program provides direction to the program. Connecting the advantages of program drivers to organizational goals builds the confidence of senior leaders and decision makers, increasing the continued commitment to invest in accessibility programming.

Info-Tech Accessibility Maturity Framework

After initially ensuring your organization is compliant with regulations and standards, you will progress to building disciplined process and consistent standardized processes. Eventually you will build the ability for predictable process, and lastly, you’ll optimize by continuously improving.

Depending on the level of maturity you are trying to achieve, it could take months or even years to implement. The important thing to understand, however, is that accessibility work is never done.

At all levels of the maturity framework, you must consider the interconnected aspects of people, process, and technology. However, as the organization progresses, the impact will shift from largely being focused on process and technology improvement to being focused on people.

Info-Tech Insight
IT typically works through maturity frameworks from the bottom to the top, progressing at each level until they reach the end. When it comes to digital accessibility initiatives, being especially thorough, thoughtful, and collaborative is critical to success. This will mean spending more time in the Developing, Defined, and Managed levels of maturity rather than trying to reach Optimized as quickly as you can. This may feel contrary to what IT historically considers as a successful implementation.

Accessibility maturity levels

2.1.3 Conduct future-state analysis

Identify your target state of maturity

1. Provide the group with your maturity assessment results to review as well as the slides on the maturity levels, framework, and drivers.
2. Compare the benefits listed on the Accessibility maturity levels slide to those that you named in the previous exercise and determine which maturity level best describes your target state.
3. Discuss as a group and agree on one desired maturity level to reach.
4. Review the other levels of maturity and determine what is in and out of scope for the project (higher-level benefits would be considered out of scope).
5. Document your target state of maturity in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Case Study

Accessibility as a differentiator

INDUSTRY
Financial

SOURCE
WAI-Engage

Step 2.2

Define your accessibility program goals and objectives

Activities

2.2.1 Create a list of goals and objectives

2.2.2 Finalize key metrics

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Outcomes of this step
You will have clear measurable goals and objectives to respond to identified accessibility issues and organizational goals.

What does a good goal look like?

Use the SMART framework to build effective goals.

SMART is a common framework for setting effective goals. Make sure your goals satisfy these criteria to ensure you can achieve real results.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

2.2.1 Create a list of goals and objectives

Use the outcomes from activity 2.1.2.

1. Using the prioritized list of what your solution must have, should have, could have, and won’t have from activity 2.1.2, develop goals.
2. Remember to use the SMART goal framework to build out each goal (see the previous slide for more information on SMART goals).
3. Ensure each goal supports departmental and organizational goals to ensure it is meaningful.
4. Document your goals and objectives in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Establish Baseline Metrics

Baseline metrics will be improved through:

1. Progressing through the accessibility maturity model.
2. Addressing accessibility earlier in processes to avoid tech debt and rework late in projects or releases.
3. Making accessibility part of the procurement process as a scoring consideration and vendor choice.
4. Ensuring compliance with regulations and standards.

For more metrics ideas, see the Info-Tech IT Metrics Library.

2.2.2 Finalize key metrics

Finalize key metrics the organization will use to measure accessibility success

1. Brainstorm how you would measure the success of each goal based on the benefits, challenges, and risks you previously identified.
2. Write each of the metric ideas down and finalize three to five key metrics which you will track. The metrics you choose should relate to the key challenges or risks you have identified and match your desired maturity level and driver.
3. Document your key metrics in the Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Step 2.3

Document accessibility program roles and responsibilities

Activities

2.3.1 Populate a RACI chart

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Outcomes of this step
At the end of this step, you will have a completed RACI chart documenting the roles and responsibilities related to accessibility for your accessibility business case.

2.3.1 Populate a RACI

Populate a RACI chart to identify who should be responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each key activity.

Define who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for the project team:

1. Write out the list of all stakeholders along the top of a whiteboard. Write out the key project steps along the left-hand side.
2. For each initiative, identify each team member’s role. Are they:
   Responsible: The one responsible for getting the job done.
   Accountable: Only one person can be accountable for each task.
   Consulted: Are involved by providing knowledge.
   Informed: Receive information about execution and quality.
3. As you proceed, continue to add tasks and assign responsibility to the RACI chart in the appendix of the Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Phase 3

Prepare your business case and get approval

Phase 1
1.1 Understand standards and legislation
1.2 Build awareness
1.3 Understand maturity level

Phase 2
2.1 Define desired future state
2.2 Define goals and objectives
2.3 Document roles and responsibilities

Phase 3
3.1 Prepare business case template for presentation and approval
3.2 Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

The Accessibility Business Case for IT

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Compiling the work and learning you’ve done so far into a business case presentation.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Project lead/sponsor
• Senior leaders/approval authority

There is a business case for accessibility

• When planning for initiatives, a business case is a necessary tool. Although it can feel like an administrative exercise, it helps create a compelling argument to senior leaders about the benefits and necessity of building an accessibility program.
• No matter the industry, you need to justify how the budget and effort you require for the initiative support organizational goals. However, senior leaders of different industries might be motivated by different reasons. For example, government is strongly motivated by legal and equity aspects, commercial companies may be attracted to the increase in innovation or market reach, and educational and nonprofit companies are likely motivated by brand enhancement.
• The organizational focus and goals will guide your business case for accessibility. Highlight the most relevant benefits to your operational landscape and the risk of inaction.

Source: WAI, 2018

“Many organizations are waking up to the fact that embracing accessibility leads to multiple benefits – reducing legal risks, strengthening brand presence, improving customer experience and colleague productivity.”
– Paul Smyth, Head of Digital Accessibility, Barclays
Source: WAI, 2018

Step 3.1

Customize and populate the Accessibility Business Case Template

Activities

3.1.1 Prepare your business case template for presentation and approval

Build Your Business Case

Outcomes of this step
Following this step, you will have a customized business case presentation that you can present to senior leaders.

Use Info-Tech’s template to communicate with stakeholders

Obtain approval for your accessibility program by customizing Info-Tech’s Accessibility Business Case Template, which is designed to effectively convey your key messages. Tailor the template to suit your needs.

It includes:

• Project context
• Project scope and objectives
• Knowledge transfer roadmap
• Next steps

Info-Tech Insight
The support of senior leaders is critical to the success of your accessibility program development. Remind them of the benefits and impact and the risks associated with inaction.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

3.1.1 Prepare a presentation for senior leaders to gain approval

Now that you understand your current and desired accessibility maturity, the next step is to get sign-off to begin planning your initiatives.

Know your audience:

1. Consider who will be included in your presentation audience.
2. You want your presentation to be succinct and hard-hitting. Management’s time is tight, and they will lose interest if you drag out the delivery. Impact them hard and fast with the challenges, benefits, and risks of inaction.
3. Contain the presentation to no more than an hour. Depending on your audience, the actual presentation delivery could be quite short. You want to ensure adequate time for questions and answers.
4. Schedule a meeting with the key decision makers who will need to approve the initiatives (IT leadership team, executive team, the board, etc.) and present your business case.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Step 3.2

Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

Activities

3.2.1 Prepare for implementation: Complete the implementation prep to-do list and assign proposed timelines

Build Your Business Case

Outcomes of this step
This step will help you gain leadership’s approval to move forward with building and implementing the accessibility program.

Prepare to implement your program

Complete the to-do list to ensure you are ready to move your accessibility program forward.

3.2.1 Prep for implementation (action planning)

Use the implementation prep to-do list to make sure you have gathered relevant information and completed critical steps to be ready for success.

Use the list on the previous slide to make sure you are set up for implementation success and that you’re ready to move your accessibility program forward.

1. Assign proposed timelines to each of the items.
2. Work through the list, collecting or completing each item.
3. As you proceed, keep your identified drivers, current state, desired future state, goals, and objectives in mind.

Related Info-Tech Research

Implement and Mature Your User Experience Design Practice

• Create a practice that is focused on human outcomes; it starts and ends with the people you are designing for. This includes:
  • Establishing a practice with a common vision.
  • Enhancing the practice through four design factors.
  • Communicating a roadmap to improve your business through design.

Modernize Your Corporate Website to Drive Business Value

• Users are demanding more valuable web functionalities and improved access to your website services.
• The criteria of user acceptance and satisfaction involves more than an aesthetically pleasing user interface (UI). It also includes how emotionally attached the user is to the website and how it accommodates user behaviors.

IT Diversity & Inclusion Tactics

• Although inclusion is key to the success of a diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy, the complexity of the concept makes it a daunting pursuit.
• This is further complicated by the fact that creating inclusion is not a one-and-done exercise. Rather, it requires the ongoing commitment of employees and managers to reassess their own behaviors and to drive a cultural shift.

Fix Your IT Culture

• Go beyond value statements to create a culture that enables the departmental strategy.
• There is confusion about how to translate culture from an abstract concept to something that is measurable, actionable, and process driven.
• Organizations lack clarity about who is accountable and responsible for culture, with groups often pointing fingers at each other.

Works cited

“2021 State of Digital Accessibility.” Level Access, n.d. Accessed 10 Aug. 2022

”2022 Midyear Report: ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuits.” UsableNet, 2022. Accessed 9 Nov. 2022

“Barclay’s Bank Case Study.” WAI-Engage, 12 Sept. 2018. Accessed 7 Nov. 2022.

Bilodeau, Howard, et al. “StatCan COVID-19 Data to Insights for a Better Canada.” Statistics Canada, 24 June 2021. Accessed 10 Aug. 2022.

Casey, Caroline. “Do Your D&I Efforts Include People With Disabilities?” Harvard Business Review, 19 March 2020. Accessed 28 July 2022.

Digitalisation World. “Organisations failing to meet digital accessibility standards.” Angel Business Communications, 19 May 2022. Accessed Oct. 2022.

“disability.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disability. Accessed 10 Aug. 2022.

“Disability.” World Health Organization, 2022. Accessed 10 Aug 2022.

“Driving the Accessibility Advantage at Accenture.” Accenture, 2022. Accessed 7 Oct. 2022.

eSSENTIAL Accessibility. The Must-Have WCAG 2.1 Checklist. 2022

Hopewell, May. Accessibility in the Workplace. 2022.

“Initiate.” W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 31 March 2016. Accessed 18 Aug. 2022.

Kalcevich, Kate, and Mike Gifford. “How to Bake Layers of Accessibility Testing Into Your Process.” Smashing Magazine, 26 April 2021. Accessed 31 Aug. 2022.

Noone, Cat. “4 Common Ways Companies Alienate People with Disabilities.” Harvard Business Review, 29 Nov. 2021. Accessed Jul. 2022.

Taylor, Jason. “A Record-Breaking Year for ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuits.” UsableNet, 21 December 2020. Accessed Jul. 2022.

“The Business Case for Digital Accessibility.” W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 9 Nov. 2018. Accessed 4 Aug. 2022.

“The WebAIM Million.” Web AIM, 31 March 2022. Accessed 28 Jul. 2022.

Washington, Ella F. “The Five Stages of DEI Maturity.” Harvard Business Review, November - December 2022. Accessed 7 Nov. 2022.

Wyman, Nicholas. “An Untapped Talent Resource: People With Disabilities.” Forbes, 25 Feb. 2021. Accessed 14 Sep. 2022.

Define Your Cloud Vision

Define your cloud vision before it defines you

Analyst perspective

Use the cloud’s strengths. Mitigate its weaknesses.

The cloud isn’t magic. It’s not necessarily cheaper, better, or even available for the thing you want it to do. It’s not mysterious or a cure-all, and it does take a bit of effort to systematize your approach and make consistent, defensible decisions about your cloud services. That’s where this blueprint comes in.

Your cloud vision is the culmination of this effort all boiled down into a single statement: “This is how we want to use the cloud.” That simple statement should, of course, be representative of – and built from – a broader, contextual strategy discussion that answers the following questions: What should go to the cloud? What kind of cloud makes sense? Should the cloud deployment be public, private, or hybrid? What does a migration look like? What risks and roadblocks need to be considered when exploring your cloud migration options? What are the “day 2” activities that you will need to undertake after you’ve gotten the ball rolling?

Taken as a whole, answering these questions is difficult task. But with the framework provided here, it’s as easy as – well, let’s just say it’s easier.

Jeremy Roberts

Research Director, Infrastructure and Operations

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• You are both extrinsically motivated to move to the cloud (e.g. by vendors) and intrinsically motivated by internal digital transformation initiatives.
• You need to define the cloud’s true value proposition for your organization without assuming it is an outsourcing opportunity or will save you money.
• Your industry, once cloud-averse, is now normalizing the use of cloud services, but you have not established a basic cloud vision from which to develop a strategy at a later point.

Common Obstacles

• Organizations jump to the cloud before defining their cloud vision and without any clear plan for realizing the cloud’s benefits.
• Many organizations have a foot in the cloud already, but these decisions have been made in an ad hoc rather than systematic fashion.
• You lack a consistent framework to assess your workloads’ suitability for the cloud.

Info-Tech's Approach

• Evaluate workloads’ suitability for the cloud using Info-Tech’s methodology to select the optimal migration (or non-migration) path based on the value of cloud characteristics.
• Codify risks tied to workloads’ cloud suitability and plan mitigations.
• Build a roadmap of initiatives for actions by workload and risk mitigation.
• Define a cloud vision to share with stakeholders.

Info-Tech Insight: 1) Base migration decisions on cloud characteristics. If your justification for the migration is simply getting your workload out of the data center, think again. 2) Address the risks up front in your migration plan. 3) The cloud changes roles and calls for different skill sets, but Ops is here to stay.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations who need to:

• Identify workloads that are good candidates for the cloud.
• Develop a consistent, cost-effective approach to cloud services.
• Outline and mitigate risks.
• Define your organization’s cloud archetype.
• Map initiatives on a roadmap.
• Communicate your cloud vision to stakeholders so they can understand the reasons behind a cloud decision and differentiate between different cloud service and deployment models.
• Understand the risks, roadblocks, and limitations of the cloud.

“We’re moving from a world where companies like Oracle and Microsoft and HP and Dell were all critically important to a world where Microsoft is still important, but Amazon is now really important, and Google also matters. The technology has changed, but most of the major vendors they’re betting their business on have also changed. And that’s super hard for people..” –David Chappell, Author and Speaker

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

• Organizations jump to the cloud before defining their cloud vision and without any clear plan for realizing the cloud’s benefits.
• Many organizations already have a foot in the cloud, but the choice to explore these solutions was made in an ad hoc rather than systematic fashion. The cloud just sort of happened.
• The lack of a consistent assessment framework means that some workloads that probably belong in the cloud are kept on premises or with hosted services providers – and vice versa.
• Securing cloud expertise is remarkably difficult – especially in a labor market roiled by the global pandemic and the increasing importance of cloud services.

Standard cloud challenges

30% of all cloud spend is self-reported as waste. Many workloads that end up in the cloud don’t belong there. Many workloads that do belong in the cloud aren’t properly migrated. (Flexera, 2021)

44% of respondents report themselves as under-skilled in the cloud management space. (Pluralsight, 2021)

Info-Tech’s approach

Goals and drivers

• Service model
  • What type of cloud makes the most sense for workload archetypes? When does it make sense to pick SaaS over IaaS, for example?
• Delivery model
  • Will services be delivered over the public cloud, a private cloud, or a hybrid cloud? What challenges accompany this decision?

• Migration Path
  • What does the migration path look like? What does the transition to the cloud look like, and how much effort will be required? Amazon’s 6Rs framework captures migration options: rehosting, repurchasing, replatforming, and refactoring, along with retaining and retiring. Each workload should be assessed for its suitability for one or more of these paths.

• Support model
  • How will services be provided? Will staff be trained, new staff hired, a service provider retained for ongoing operations, or will a consultant with cloud expertise be brought on board for a defined period? The appropriate support model is highly dependent on goals along with expected outcomes for different workloads.

Highlight risks and roadblocks

Formalize cloud vision

Document your cloud strategy

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Determine the hypothesized value of cloud for your organization.
2. Evaluate workloads with 6Rs framework.
3. Identify and mitigate risks.
4. Identify cloud archetype.
5. Plot initiatives on a roadmap.
6. Write action plan statement and goal statement.

What is the cloud, how is it deployed, and how is service provided?

Cloud Characteristics

1. On-demand self-service: the ability to access reosurces instantly without vendor interaction
2. Broad network access: all services delivered over the network
3. Resource pooling: multi-tenant environment (shared)
4. Rapid elasticity: the ability to expand and retract capabilities as needed
5. Measured service: transparent metering

Service Model:

1. Software-as-a-Service: all but the most minor configuration is done by the vendor
2. Platform-as-a-Service: customer builds the application using tools provided by the provider
3. Infrastructure-as-a-Service: the customer manages OS, storage, and the application

Delivery Model

1. Public cloud: accessible to anyone over the internet; multi-tenant environment
2. Private cloud: provisioned for a single organization with multiple units
3. Hybrid cloud: two or more connected clouds; data is portage across them
4. Community cloud: provisioned for a specific group of organizations

(National Institute of Standards and Technology)

A workload-first approach will allow you to take full advantage of the cloud’s strengths

• Under all but the most exceptional circumstances, good cloud strategies will incorporate different service models. Very few organizations are “IaaS shops” or “SaaS shops,” even if they lean heavily in one direction.
• These different service models (including non-cloud options like colocation and on-premises infrastructure) each have different strengths. Part of your cloud strategy should involve determining which of the services makes the most sense for you.
• Own the cloud by understanding which cloud (or non-cloud!) offering makes the most sense for you given your unique context.

Migration paths

In a 2016 blog post, Amazon introduced a framework for understanding cloud migration strategies. The framework presented here is slightly modified – including a “relocate” component rather than a “retire” component – but otherwise hews close to the standard.

These migration paths reflect organizational capabilities and desired outcomes in terms of service models – cloud or otherwise. Retention means keeping the workload where it is, in a datacenter or a colocation service, or relocating to a colocation or hosted software environment. These represent the “non-cloud” migration paths.

In the graphic on the right, the paths within the red box lead to the cloud. Rehosting means lifting and shifting to an infrastructure environment. Migrating a virtual machine from your VMware environment on premises to Azure Virtual machines is a quick way to realize some benefits from the cloud. Migrating from SQL Server on premises to a cloud-based SQL solution looks a bit more like changing platforms (replatforming). It involves basic infrastructure modification without a substantial architectural component.

Refactoring is the most expensive of the options and involves engaging the software development lifecycle to build a custom solution, fundamentally rewriting the solution to be cloud native and take advantage of cloud-native architectures. This can result in a PaaS or an IaaS solution.

Finally, repurchasing means simply going to market and procuring a new solution. This may involve migrating data, but it does not require the migration of components.

Migration Paths

Retain (Revisit)

• Keep the application in its current form, at least for now. This doesn’t preclude revisiting it in the future.

Relocate

• Move the workload between datacenters or to a hosted software/colocation provider.

Rehost

• Move the application to the cloud (IaaS) and continue to run it in more or less the same form as it currently runs.

Replatform

• Move the application to the cloud and perform a few changes for cloud optimizations.

Refactor

• Rewrite the application, taking advantage of cloud-native architectures.

Repurchase

• Replace with an alternative, cloud-native application and migrate the data.

Support model

Support models by characteristic

IT services, including cloud services, can be delivered and managed in multiple ways depending on the nature of the workload and the organization’s intended path forward. Three high-level options are presented here and may be more or less valuable based on the duration of the expected engagement with the service (temporary or permanent), the skills specialization required, and the flexibility necessary to complete the job.

By way of example, a highly technical, short-term project with significant flexibility requirements might be a good fit for an expensive consultant, whereas post-implementation maintenance of a cloud email system requires relatively little specialization and flexibility and would therefore be a better fit for internal management.

There is no universally applicable rule here, but there are some workloads that are generally a good fit for the cloud and others that are not as effective, with that fit being conditional on the appropriate support model being employed.

Risks, roadblocks, and strategy components

No two cloud strategies are exactly alike, but all should address 14 key areas. A key step in defining your cloud vision is an assessment of these strategy components. Lower maturity does not preclude an aggressive cloud strategy, but it does indicate that higher effort will be required to make the transition.

Cloud archetypes – a cloud vision component

Once you understand the value of the cloud, your workloads’ general suitability for cloud, and your proposed risks and mitigations, the next step is to define your cloud archetype.

Your organization’s cloud archetype is the strategic posture that IT adopts to best support the organization’s goals. Info-Tech’s model recognizes seven archetypes, divided into three high-level archetypes.

After consultation with your stakeholders, and based on the results of the suitability and risk assessment activities, define your archetype. The archetype feeds into the overall cloud vision and provides simple insight into the cloud future state for all stakeholders.

The cloud vision itself is captured in a “vision statement,” a short summary of the overall approach that includes the overall cloud archetype.

Info-Tech’s methodology for defining your cloud vision

Insight summary

The cloud may not be right for you – and that’s okay!

Don’t think about the cloud as an inevitable next step for all workloads. The cloud is merely another tool in the toolbox, ready to be used when appropriate and put away when it’s not needed. Cloud first isn’t always the way to go.

Not all clouds are equal

It’s not “should I go to the cloud?” but “what service and delivery models make sense based on my needs and risk tolerance?” Thinking about the cloud as a binary can force workloads into the cloud that don’t belong (and vice versa).

Bottom-up is best

A workload assessment is the only way to truly understand the cloud’s value. Work from the bottom up, not the top down, understand what characteristics make a workload cloud suitable, and strategize on that basis.

Your accountability doesn’t change

You are still accountable for maintaining available, secure, functional applications and services. Cloud providers share some responsibility, but the buck stops where it always has: with you.

Don’t customize for the sake of customization

SaaS providers make money selling the same thing to everyone. When migrating a workload to SaaS, work with stakeholders to pursue standardization around a selected platform and avoid customization where possible.

Best of both worlds, worst of both worlds

Hybrid clouds are in fashion, but true hybridity comes with additional cost, administration, and other constraints. A convoy moves at the speed of its slowest member.

The journey matters as much as the destination

How you get there is as important as what “there” actually is. Any strategy that focuses solely on the destination misses out on a key part of the value conversation: the migration strategy.

Blueprint benefits

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

This presentation captures the results of the exercises and presents a complete vision to stakeholders including a desired target state, a rubric for decision making, the results of the workload assessments, and an overall risk profile.

Cloud Vision Workbook

This workbook includes the standard cloud workload assessment questionnaire along with the results of the assessment. It also includes the milestone timeline for the implementation of the cloud vision.

Blueprint benefits

IT Benefits

• A consistent approach to the cloud takes the guesswork out of deployment decisions and makes it easier for IT to move on to the execution stage.
• When properly incorporated, cloud services come with many benefits, including automation, elasticity, and alternative architectures (micro-services, containers). The cloud vision project will help IT readers articulate expected benefits and work towards achieving them.
• A clear framework for incorporating organizational goals into cloud plans.

Business benefits

• Simple, well-governed access to high-quality IT resources.
• Access to the latest and greatest in technology to facilitate remote work.
• Framework for cost management in the cloud that incorporates OpEx and chargebacks/showbacks. A clear understanding of expected changes to cost modeling is also a benefit of a cloud vision.
• Clarity for stakeholders about IT’s response (and contribution to) IT strategic initiatives.

Measure the value of this blueprint

Don’t take our word for it:

• The cloud vision material in various forms has been offered for several years, and members have generally benefited substantially, both from cloud vision workshops and from guided implementations led by analysts.
• After each engagement, we send a survey that asks members how they benefited from the experience. Of 30 responses, the cloud vision research has received an average score of 9.8/10. Real members have found significant value in the process.
• Additionally, members reported saving between 2 and 120 days (for an average of 17), and financial savings ranged from $1,920 all the way up to $1.27 million, for an average of $170,577.90! If we drop outliers on both ends, the average reported value of a cloud vision engagement is $37, 613.
• Measure the value by calculating the time saved from using Info-Tech’s framework vs. a home-brewed cloud strategy alternative and by comparing the overall cost of a guided implementation or workshop with the equivalent offering from another firm. We’re confident you’ll come out ahead.

9.8/10 Average reported satisfaction

17 Days Average reported time savings

$37, 613 Average cost savings (adj.)

Executive Brief Case Study

Industry: Financial

Source: Info-Tech workshop

Anonymous financial institution

A small East Coast financial institution was required to develop a cloud strategy. This strategy had to meet several important requirements, including alignment with strategic priorities and best practices, along with regulatory compliance, including with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The bank already had a significant cloud footprint and was looking to organize and formalize the strategy going forward.

Leadership needed a comprehensive strategy that touched on key areas including the delivery model, service models, individual workload assessments, cost management, risk management and governance. The output had to be consumable by a variety of audiences with varying levels of technical expertise and had to speak to IT’s role in the broader strategic goals articulated earlier in the year.

Results

The bank engaged Info-Tech for a cloud vision workshop and worked through four days of exercises with various IT team members. The bank ultimately decided on a multi-cloud strategy that prioritized SaaS while also allowing for PaaS and IaaS solutions, along with some non-cloud hosted solutions, based on organizational circumstances.

Bank cloud vision

[Bank] will provide innovative financial and related services by taking advantage of the multiplicity of best-of-breed solutions available in the cloud. These solutions make it possible to benefit from industry-level innovations, while ensuring efficiency, redundancy, and enhanced security.

Bank cloud decision workflow

• SaaS
  • Platform?
    • Yes
      • PaaS
    • No
      • Hosted
    • IaaS
      • Other

Non-cloud

Cloud

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this crticial project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off imediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge the take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Phase 1

• Call #1: Discuss current state, challenges, etc.
• Call #2: Goals, drivers, and current state.

Phase 2

• Call #3: Conduct cloud suitability assessment for selected workloads.

Phase 3

• Call #4: Generate and categorize risks.
• Call #5: Begin the risk mitigation conversation.

Phase 4

• Call #6: Complete the risk mitigation process
• Call #7: Finalize vision statement and cloud decision framework.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Understand the cloud

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

Phase 1

Phase 1

Understand the Cloud

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

1.1.1 Generate organizational goals

1.1.2 Define cloud drivers

1.1.3 Define success indicators

1.3.1 Record your current state

1.4.1 Select workloads for further assessment

This phase involves the following participants:

IT management, the core working group, security, infrastructure, operations, architecture, engineering, applications, non-IT stakeholders.

It starts with shared understanding

Stakeholders must agree on overall goals and what “cloud” means

The cloud is a nebulous term that can reasonably describe services ranging from infrastructure as a service as delivered by providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft through its Azure platform, right up to software as a service solutions like Jira or Salesforce. These solutions solve different problems – just because your CRM would be a good fit for a migration to Salesforce doesn’t mean the same system would make sense in Azure or AWS.

This is important because the language we use to talk about the cloud can color our approach to cloud services. A “cloud-first” strategy will mean something different to a CEO with a concept of the cloud rooted in Salesforce than it will to a system administrator who interprets it to mean a transition to cloud-hosted virtual machines.

Add to this the fact that not all cloud services are hosted externally by providers (public clouds) and the fact that multiple delivery models can be engaged at once through hybrid or multi-cloud approaches, and it’s apparent that a shared understanding of the cloud is necessary for a coherent strategy to take form.

This phase proceeds in four steps, each governed by the principle of shared understanding. The first requires a shared understanding of corporate goals and drivers. Step 2 involves coming to a shared understanding of the cloud’s unique characteristics. Step 3 requires a review of the current state. Finally, in Step 4, participants will identify workloads that are suitable for analysis as candidates for the cloud.

Step 1.1

Generate goals and drivers

Activities

1.1.1 Define organizational goals

1.1.2 Define cloud drivers

1.1.3 Define success indicators

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

This step involves the following participants:

• IT management
• Core working group
• Security
• Applications
• Infrastructure
• Service management
• Leadership

Outcomes of this step

• List of organizational goals
• List of cloud drivers
• Defined success indicators

What can the cloud do for you?

The cloud is not valuable for its own sake, and not all users derive the same value

• The cloud is characterized by on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service. Any or all of those characteristics might be enough to make the cloud appealing, but in most cases, there is an overriding driver.
• Multiple paths may lead to the cloud. Consider an organization with a need to control costs by showing back to business units, or perhaps by reducing capital expenditure – the cloud may be the most appropriate way to effect these changes. Conversely, an organization expanding rapidly and with a need to access the latest and greatest technology might benefit from the elasticity and pooled resources that major cloud providers can offer.
• In these cases, the destination might be the same (a cloud solution) but the delivery model – public, private, or hybrid – and the decisions made around the key strategy components, including architecture, provisioning, and cost management, will almost certainly be different.
• Defining goals, understanding cloud drivers, and – crucially – understanding what success means, are all therefore essential elements of the cloud vision process.

1.1.1 Generate organizational goals

1-3 hours

Input

• Strategy documentation

Output

• Organizational goals

Materials

• Whiteboard (digital/physical)

Participants

• IT leadership
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security

1. As a group, brainstorm organizational goals, ideally based on existing documentation
   • Review relevant corporate and IT strategies.
   • If you do not have access to internal documentation, review the standard goals on the next slide and select those that are most relevant for you.
2. Record the most important business goals in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation. Include descriptions where possible to ensure wide readability.
3. Make note of these goals. They should inform the answers to prompts offered in the Cloud Vision Workbook and should be a consistent presence in the remainder of the visioning exercise. If you’re conducting the session in person, leave the goals up on a whiteboard and make reference to them throughout the workshop.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Standard COBIT 19 enterprise goals

1. Portfolio of competitive products and services
2. Managed business risk
3. Compliance with external laws and regulations
4. Quality of financial information
5. Customer-oriented service culture
6. Business service continuity and availability
7. Quality of management information
8. Optimization of internal business process functionality
9. Optimization of business process costs
10. Staff skills, motivation, and productivity
11. Compliance with internal policies
12. Managed digital transformation programs
13. Product and business innovation

1.1.2 Define cloud drivers

30-60 minutes

Input

• Organizational goals
• Strategy documentation
• Management/staff perspective

Output

• List of cloud drivers

Materials

• Sticky notes
• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• IT leadership
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security

1. Cloud drivers sit at a level of abstraction below organizational goals. Keeping your organizational goals in mind, have each participant in the session write down how they expect to benefit from the cloud on a sticky note.
2. Solicit input one at a time and group similar responses. Encourage participants to bring forward their cloud goals even if similar goals have been mentioned previously. The number of mentions is a useful way to gauge the relative weight of the drivers.
3. Once this is done, you should have a few groups of similar drivers. Work with the group to name each category. This name will be the driver reported in the documentation.
4. Input the results of the exercise into the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation, and include descriptions based on the constituent drivers. For example, if a driver is titled “do more valuable work,” the constituent drivers might be “build cloud skills,” “focus on core products,” and “avoid administration work where possible.” The description would be based on these components.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

1.1.3 Define success indicators

1 hour

Input

• Cloud drivers
• Organizational goals

Output

• List of cloud driver success indicators

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• IT leadership
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security

1. On a whiteboard, draw a table with each of the cloud drivers (identified in 1.1.2) across the top.
2. Work collectively to generate success indicators for each cloud driver. In this case, a success indicator is some way you can report your progress with the stated driver. It is a real-world proxy for the sometimes abstract phenomena that make up your drivers. Think about what would be true if your driver was realized.
   1. For example, if your driver is “faster access to resources,” you might consider indicators like developer satisfaction, project completion time, average time to provision, etc.
3. Once you are satisfied with your list of indicators, populate the slide in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation for validation from stakeholders.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Step 1.2

Explore cloud characteristics

Activities

Understand the value of the cloud:

• Review delivery models
• Review support models
• Review service models
• Review migration paths

Understand the Cloud

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Architecture
• Engineering
• Security

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of cloud service models and value

Defining the cloud

Per NIST, the cloud has five fundamental characteristics. All clouds have these characteristics, even if they are executed in somewhat different ways between delivery models, service models, and even individual providers.

Cloud characteristics

On-demand self-service

Cloud customers are capable of provisioning cloud resources without human interaction (e.g. contacting sales), generally through a web console.

Broad network access

Capabilities are designed to be delivered over a network and are generally intended for access by a wide variety of platform types (cloud services are generally device-agnostic).

Resource pooling

Multiple customers (internal, in the case of private clouds) make use of a highly abstracted shared infrastructure managed by the cloud provider.

Rapid elasticity

Customers are capable of provisioning additional resources as required, pulling from a functionally infinite pool of capacity. Cloud resources can be spun-down when no longer needed.

Measured service

Consumption is metered based on an appropriate unit of analysis (number of licenses, storage used, compute cycles, etc.) and billing is transparent and granular.

Cloud delivery models

The NIST definition of cloud computing outlines four cloud delivery models: public, private, hybrid, and community clouds. A community cloud is like a private cloud, but it is provisioned for the exclusive use of a like-minded group of organizations, usually in a mutually beneficial, non-competitive arrangement. Universities and hospitals are examples of organizations that can pool their resources in this way without impacting competitiveness. The Info-Tech model covers three key delivery models – public, private, and hybrid, and an overarching model (multi-cloud) that can comprise more than one of the other models – public + public, public + hybrid, etc.

Public

The cloud service is provisioned for access by the general public (customers).

Private

A private cloud has the five key characteristics, but is provisioned for use by a single entity, like a company or organization.

Hybrid

Hybridity essentially refers to interoperability between multiple cloud delivery models (public +private).

Multi

A multi-cloud deployment requires only that multiple clouds are used without any necessary interoperability (Nutanix, 2019).

Public cloud

This is what people generally think about when they talk about cloud

• The public cloud is, well, public! Anyone can make use of its resources, and in the case of the major providers, capacity is functionally unlimited. Need to store exabytes of data in the cloud? No problem! Amazon will drive a modified shipping container to your datacenter, load it up, and “migrate” it to a datacenter.
• Public clouds offer significant variety on the infrastructure side. Major IaaS providers, like Microsoft and Amazon, offer dozens of services across many different categories including compute, networking, and storage, but also identity, containers, machine learning, virtual desktops, and much, much more. (See a list from Microsoft here, and Amazon here)
• There are undoubtedly strengths to the public cloud model. Providers offer the “latest and greatest” and customers need not worry about the details, including managing infrastructure and physical locations. Providers offer built-in redundancy, multi-regional deployments, automation tools, management and governance solutions, and a variety of leading-edge technologies that would not be feasible for organizations to run in-house, like high performance compute, blockchain, or quantum computing.
• Of course, the public cloud is not all sunshine and rainbows – there are downsides as well. It can be expensive; it can introduce regulatory complications to have to trust another entity with your key information. Additionally, there can be performance hiccups, and with SaaS products, it can be difficult to monitor at the appropriate (per-transaction) level.

Prominent examples include:

AWS

Microsoft

Azure

Salesforce.com

Workday

SAP

Private cloud

A lower-risk cloud for cloud-averse customers?

• A cloud is a cloud, no matter how small. Some IT shops deploy private clouds that make use of the five key cloud characteristics but provisioned for the exclusive use of a single entity, like a corporation.
• Private clouds have numerous benefits. Some potential cloud customers might be uncomfortable with the shared responsibility that is inherent in the public cloud. Private clouds allow customers to deliver flexible, measured services without having to surrender control, but they require significant overhead, capital expenditure, administrative effort, and technical expertise.
• According to the 2021 State of the Cloud Report, private cloud use is common, and the most frequently cited toolset is VMware vSphere, followed by Azure Stack, OpenStack, and AWS Outposts. Private cloud deployments are more common in larger organizations, which makes sense given the overhead required to manage such an environment.

Private cloud adoption

VMware and Microsoft lead the pack among private cloud customers, with Amazon and Red Hat also substantially present across private cloud environments.

Hybrid cloud

The best of both worlds?

Hybrid cloud architectures combine multiple cloud delivery models and facilitate some level of interoperability. NIST suggests bursting and load balancing as examples of hybrid cloud use cases. Note: it is not sufficient to simply have multiple clouds running in parallel – there must be a toolset that allows for an element of cross-cloud functionality.

This delivery model is attractive because it allows users to take advantage of the strengths of multiple service models using a single management pane. Bursting across clouds to take advantage of additional capacity or disaster recovery capabilities are two obvious use cases that appeal to hybrid cloud users.

But while hybridity is all the rage (especially given the impact Covid-19 has had on the workplace), the reality is that any hybrid cloud user must take the good with the bad. Multiple clouds and a management layer can be technically complex, expensive, and require maintaining a physical infrastructure that is not especially valuable (“I thought we were moving to the cloud to get out of the datacenter!”).

Before selecting a hybrid approach through services like VMware Cloud on AWS or Microsoft’s Azure Stack, consider the cost, complexity, and actual expected benefit.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google dominate public cloud IaaS, but IBM is betting big on hybrid cloud:

With its acquisition of Red Hat in 2019 for $34 billion, Big Blue put its money where its mouth is and acquired a substantial hybrid cloud business. At the time of the acquisition, Red Hat’s CEO, Jim Whitehurst, spoke about the benefit IBM expected to receive:

“Joining forces with IBM gives Red Hat the opportunity to bring more open source innovation to an even broader range of organizations and will enable us to scale to meet the need for hybrid cloud solutions that deliver true choice and agility” (Red Hat, 2019).

Multi-cloud

For most organizations, the multi-cloud is the most realistic option.

Multi-cloud is popular!

Multi-cloud solutions exist at a different layer of abstraction from public, private, and even hybrid cloud delivery models. A multi-cloud architecture, as the name suggests, requires the user to be a customer of more than one cloud provider, and it can certainly include a hybrid cloud deployment, but it is not bound by the same rules of interoperability.

Many organizations – especially those with fewer resources or a lack of a use case for a private cloud – rely on a multi-cloud architecture to build applications where they belong, and they manage each environment separately (or occasionally with the help of cloud management platforms).

If your data team wants to work in AWS and your enterprise services run on basic virtual machines in Azure, that might be the most effective architecture. As the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report suggests, this architecture is far more common than the more complicated bursting or brokering architectures characteristic of hybrid clouds.

NIST cloud service models

Software as a service

SaaS has exploded in popularity with consumers who wish to avail themselves of the cloud’s benefits without having to manage underlying infrastructure components. SaaS is simple, generally billed per-user per-month, and is almost entirely provider-managed.

Platform as a service

PaaS providers offer a toolset for their customers to run custom applications and services without the requirement to manage underlying infrastructure components. This service model is ideal for custom applications/services that don’t benefit from highly granular infrastructure control.

Infrastructure as a service

IaaS represents the sale of components. Instead of a service, IaaS providers sell access to components, like compute, storage, and networking, allowing for customers to build anything they want on top of the providers’ infrastructure.

Cloud service models

• This research focuses on five key service models, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. Moving right from “on-prem,” customers gradually give up more control over their environments to cloud service providers.
• An entirely premises-based environment means that the customer is responsible for everything ranging from the dirt under the datacenter to application-level configurations. Conversely, in a SaaS environment, the provider is responsible for everything but those top-level application configurations.
• A managed service provider or other third party can manage any or of the components of the infrastructure stack. A service provider may, for example, build a SaaS solution on top of another provider’s IaaS, or might offer configuration assistance with a commercially available SaaS.

Info-Tech Insight

Not all workloads fit well in the cloud. Many environments will mix service models (e.g. SaaS for some workloads, some in IaaS, some on-premises), and this can be perfectly effective. It must be consistent and intentional, however.

Organization has control

Organization or vendor may control

Vendor has control

Analytics folly

SaaS is good, but it’s not a panacea

Industry: Healthcare

Source: Info-Tech workshop

Situation

A healthcare analytics provider had already moved a significant number of “non-core workloads” to the cloud, including email, HRIS, and related services.

The company CEO was satisfied with the reduced effort required by IT to manage SaaS-based workloads and sought to extend the same benefits to the core analytics platform where there was an opportunity to reduce overhead.

Complication

Many components of the health analytics service were designed to run specifically in a datacenter and were not ready to be migrated to the cloud without significant effort/refactoring. SaaS was not an option because this was a core platform – a SaaS provider would have been the competition.

That left IaaS, which was expensive and would not bring the expected benefits (reduced overhead).

Results

The organization determined that there were no short-term gains from migrating to the cloud. Due to the nature of the application (its extensive customization, the fact that it was a core product sold by the company) any steps to reduce operational overhead were not feasible.

The CEO recognized that the analytics platform was not a good candidate for the cloud and what distinguished the analytics platform from more suitable workloads.

Migration paths

In a 2016 blog post, Amazon Web Services articulated a framework for cloud migration that incorporates elements of the journey as well as the destination. If workload owners do not choose to retain or retire their workloads, there are four alternatives. These alternatives all stack up differently along five key dimensions:

1. Value: does the workload stand to benefit from unique cloud characteristics? To what degree?
2. Effort: how much work would be required to make the transition?
3. Cost: how much money is the migration expected to cost?
4. Time: how long will the migration take?
5. Skills: what skills must be brought to bear to complete the migration?

Not all migration paths can lead to all destinations. Rehosting generally means IaaS, while repurchasing leads to SaaS. Refactoring and replatforming have some variety of outcomes, and it becomes possible to take advantage of new IaaS architectures or migrate workloads over fully to SaaS.

As part of the workload assessment process, use the five dimensions (expanded upon on the next slide) to determine what migration path makes sense. Preferred migration paths form an important part of the overall cloud vision process.

Retain (Revisit)

• Keep the application in its current form, at least for now. This doesn’t preclude revisiting it in the future.

Retire

• Get rid of the application completely.

Rehost

• Move the application to the cloud (IaaS) and continue to run it in more or less the same form as it currently runs.

Replatform

• Move the application to the cloud and perform a few changes for cloud optimizations.

Refactor

• Rewrite the application, taking advantage of cloud native architectures.

Repurchase

• Replace with an alternative, cloud-native application and migrate the data.

Migration paths – relative value

Where should you get your cloud skills?

Cloud skills are certainly top of mind right now. With the great upheaval in both work patterns and in the labor market more generally, expertise in cloud-related areas is simultaneously more valuable and more difficult to procure. According to Pluralsight’s 2021 “State of Upskilling” report, 44% of respondents report themselves under-skilled in the cloud management area, making cloud management the most significant skill gap reported on the survey.

Everyone left the office. Work as we know it is fundamentally altered for a generation or more. Cloud services shot up in popularity by enabling the transition. And yet there is a gap – a prominent gap – in skilling up for this critically important future. What is the cloud manager to do?

Per the framework presented here, that manager has three essential options. They may take somewhat different forms depending on specific requirements and the quirks of the local market, but the options are:

1. Train or hire internal resources: This might be easier said than done, especially for more niche skills, but makes sense for workloads that are critical to operations for the long term.
2. Engage a managed service provider: MSPs are often engaged to manage services where internal IT lacks bandwidth or expertise.
3. Hire a consultant: Consultants are great for time-bound implementation projects where highly specific expertise is required, such as a migration or implementation project.

Each model makes sense to some degree. When evaluating individual workloads for cloud suitability, it is critical to consider the support model – both immediate and long term. What makes sense from a value perspective?

Cloud decisions – summary

A key component of the Info-Tech cloud vision model is that it is multi-layered. Not every decision must be made at every level. At the workload level, it makes sense to select service models that make sense, but each workload does not need its own defined vision. Workload-level decisions should be guided by an overall strategy but applied tactically, based on individual workload characteristics and circumstances.

Conversely, some decisions will inevitably be applied at the environment level. With some exceptions, it is unlikely that cloud customers will build an entire private/hybrid cloud environment around a single solution; instead, they will define a broader strategy and fit individual workloads into that strategy.

Some considerations exist at both the workload and environment levels. Risks and roadblocks, as well as the preferred support model, are concerns that exist at both the environment level and at the workload level.

Step 1.3

Create a current state summary

Activities

1.3.1 Record your current state

Understand the Cloud

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

This step involves the following participants: Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Current state summary of cloud solutions

1.3.1 Record your current state

30 minutes

Input

• Knowledge of existing cloud workloads

Output

• Current state cloud summary for service, delivery, and support models

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Core working group
• Infrastructure team
• Service owners

1. On a whiteboard (real or virtual) draw a table with each of the cloud service models across the top. Leave a cell below each to list examples.
2. Under each service model, record examples present in your environment. The purpose of the exercise is to illustrate the existence of cloud services in your environment or the lack thereof, so there is no need to be exhaustive. Complete this in turn for each service model until you are satisfied that you have created an effective picture of your current cloud SaaS state, IaaS state, etc.
3. Input the results into their own slide titled “current state summary” in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.
4. Repeat for the cloud delivery models and support models and include the results of those exercises as well.
5. Create a short summary statement (“We are primarily a public cloud consumer with a large SaaS footprint and minimal presence in PaaS and IaaS. We retain an MSP to manage our hosted telephony solution; otherwise, everything is handled in house.”

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Step 1.4

Select workloads for current analysis

Activities

1.4.1 Select workloads for assessment

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• List of workloads for assessment

Understand the cloud

Generate goals and drivers

Explore cloud characteristics

Create a current state summary

Select workloads for analysis

1.4.1 Select workloads for assessment

30 minutes

Input

• Knowledge of existing cloud workloads

Output

• List of workloads to be assessed

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group
• IT management

1. In many cases, the cloud project is inspired by a desire to move a particular workload or set of workloads. Solicit feedback from the core working group about what these workloads might be. Ask everyone in the meeting to suggest a workload and record each one on a sticky note or white board (virtual or physical).
2. Discuss the results with the group and begin grouping similar workloads together. They will be subject to the assessments in the Cloud Vision Workbook, so try to avoid selecting too many workloads that will produce similar answers. It might not be obvious, but try to think about workloads that have similar usage patterns, risk levels, and performance requirements, and select a representative group.
3. You should embrace counterintuition by selecting a workload that you think is unlikely to be a good fit for the cloud if you can and subjecting it to the assessment as well for validation purposes.
4. When you have a list of 4-6 workloads, record them on tab 2 of the Cloud Vision Workbook.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Assess your cloud workloads

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

Phase 2

Phase 2

Evaluate Cloud Workloads

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Conduct workload assessments
• Determine workload future state

This phase involves the following participants:

• Subject matter experts
• Core working group
• IT management

Define Your Cloud Vision

Work from the bottom up and assess your workloads

A workload-first approach will help you create a realistic vision.

The concept of a cloud vision should unquestionably be informed by the nature of the workloads that IT is expected to provide for the wider organization. The overall cloud vision is no greater than the sum of its parts. You cannot migrate to the cloud in the abstract. Workloads need to go – and not all workloads are equally suitable for the transition.

It is therefore imperative to understand which workloads are a good fit for the cloud, which cloud service models make the most sense, how to execute the migration, what support should look like, and what risks and roadblocks you are likely to encounter as part of the process.

That’s where the Cloud Vision Workbook comes into play. You can use this tool to assess as many workloads as you’d like – most people get the idea after about four – and by the end of the exercise, you should have a pretty good idea about where your workloads belong, and you’ll have a tool to assess any net new or previously unconsidered workloads.

It’s not so much about the results of the assessment – though these are undeniably important – but about the learnings gleaned from the collaborative assessment exercise. While you can certainly fill out the assessment without any additional input, this exercise is most effective when completed as part of a group.

Introducing the Cloud Vision Workbook

• The Cloud Vision Workbook is an Excel tool that answers the age old question: “What should I do with my workloads?”
• It is divided into eight tabs, each of which offers unique value. Start by reading the introduction and inputting your list of workloads. Work your way through tabs 3-6, completing the suitability, migration, management, and risk and roadblock assessments, and review the results on tab 7.
• If you choose to go through the full battery of assessments for each workload, expect to answer and weight 111 unique questions across the four assessments. This is an intensive exercise, so carefully consider which assessments are valuable to you, and what workloads you have time to assess.
• Tab 8 hosts the milestone timeline and captures the results of the phase 3 risk and mitigation exercise.

Understand Cloud Vision Workbook outputs

Step 2.1

Conduct workload assessments

Activities

2.1.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.1.2 Interpret your results

Phase Title

Conduct workload assessments

Determine workload future state

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Workload subject matter experts

Outcomes of this step

• Completed workload assessments

2.1.1 Conduct workload assessments

2 hours per workload

Input

• List of workloads to be assessed

Output

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs

1. The Cloud Vision Workbook is your one stop shop for all things workload assessment. Open the tool to tab 2 and review the workloads you identified at the end of phase 1. Ensure that these are correct. Once satisfied, project the tool (virtually, if necessary) so that all participants can see the assessment questions.
2. Work through tabs 3-6, answering the questions and assigning a multiplier for each one. A higher multiplier increases the relative weight of the question, giving it a greater impact on the overall outcome.
3. Do your best to induce participants to offer opinions. Consensus is not absolutely necessary, but it is a good goal. Ask your participants if they agree with initial responses and occasionally take the opposite position (“I’m surprised you said agree – I would have thought we didn’t care about CapEx vs. OpEx”). Stimulate discussion.
4. Highlight any questions that you will need to return to or run by someone not present. Include a placeholder answer, as the tool requires all cells to be filled for computation.

Cloud Vision Workbook

2.1.2 Interpret your results

10 minutes

Input

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Output

• Shared understanding of implications

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs

1. Once you’ve completed all 111 questions for each workload, you can review your results on tab 7. On tab 7, you will see four populated graphics: cloud suitability, migration path, “where should skills be procured?”, and risks and roadblocks. These represent the components of the overall cloud vision that you will present to stakeholders.
2. The “cloud suitability” chart captures the service model that the assessment judges to be most suitable for the workload. Ask those present if any are surprised by the output. If there is any disagreement, discuss the source of the surprise and what a more realistic outcome would be. Revisit the assessment if necessary.
3. Conduct a similar exercise with each of the other outputs. Does it make sense to refactor the workload based on its cloud suitability? Does the fact that we scored so highly on the “consultant” support model indicate something about how we handle upskilling internally? Does the profile of risks and roadblocks identified here align with expectations? What should be ranked higher? What about lower?
4. Once everyone is generally satisfied with the results, close the tool and take a break! You’ve earned it.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Understand the cloud strategy components

Each cloud strategy will take a slightly different form, but all should contain echoes of each of these components. This process will help you define your vision and direction, but you will need to take steps to execute on that vision. The remainder of the cloud strategy, covered in the related blueprint Document Your Cloud Strategy comprises these fourteen topics divided across three categories: people, governance, and technology. The workload assessment covers these under risks and roadblocks and highlights areas that may require specific additional attention. When interpreting the results, think of these areas as comprising things that you will need to do to make your vision a reality.

People

• Skills and roles
• Culture and adoption
• Governing bodies

Governance

• Architecture
• Integration and interoperability
• Operations management
• Cloud portfolio management
• Cloud vendor management
• Finance management
• Security
• Data controls

Technology

• Monitoring
• Provisioning
• Migration

Strategy component: People

People form the core of any good strategy. As part of your cloud vision, you will need to understand the implications a cloud transition will have on your staff and users, whether those users are internal or external.

Strategy component: Governance

Without guardrails, the cloud deployment will grow organically. This has strengths (people tend to adopt solutions that they select and deploy themselves), but these are more than balanced out by the drawbacks that come with inconsistency, poor administration, duplication of services, suboptimal costing, and any number of other unique challenges. The solution is to develop and deploy governance. The following list captures some of the necessary governance-related components of a cloud strategy.

Strategy component: Governance (cont.)

Strategy component: Technology

Good technology will never replace good people and effective process, but it remains important in its own right. A migration that neglects the undeniable technical components of a solid cloud strategy is doomed to mediocrity at best and failure at worst. Understanding the technical implications of the cloud vision – particularly in terms of monitoring, provisioning, and migration – makes all the difference. You can interpret the results of the cloud workload assessments by reviewing the details presented here.

Step 2.2

Determine workload future state

Activities

2.2.1 Determine workload future state

Conduct workload assessments

Determine workload future state

This step involves the following participants:

• IT management
• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Completed workload assessments
• Defined workload future state

2.2.1 Determine workload future state

1-3 hours

Input

• Completed workload assessments

Output

• Preliminary future state outputs

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook
• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners
• IT management

1. After you’ve had a chance to validate your results, refer to tab 7 of the tool, where you will find a blank notes section.
2. With the working group, capture your answers to each of the following questions:
   1. What service model is the most suitable for the workload? Why?
   2. How will we conduct the migration? Which of the six models makes the most sense? Do we have a backup plan if our primary plan doesn’t work out?
   3. What should the support model look like?
   4. What are some workload-specific risks and considerations that must be taken into account for the workload?
3. Once you’ve got answers to each of these questions for each of the workloads, include your summary in the “notes” section of tab 7.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Paste the output into the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

• The Cloud Vision Workbook output is a compact, consumable summary of each workload’s planned future state. Paste each assessment in as necessary.
• There is no absolutely correct way to present the information, but the output is a good place to start. Do note that, while the presentation is designed to lead with the vision statement, because the process is workload-first, the assessments are populated prior to the overall vision in a bottom-up manner.
• Be sure to anticipate the questions you are likely to receive from any stakeholders. You may consider preparing for questions like: “What other workloads fit this profile?” “What do we expect the impact on the budget to be?” “How long will this take?” Keep these and other questions in mind as you progress through the vision definition process.

Info-Tech Insight

Keep your audience in mind. You may want to include some additional context in the presentation if the results are going to be presented to non-technical stakeholders or those who are not familiar with the terms or how to interpret the outputs.

Identify and Mitigate Risks

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

PHASE 3

Phase 3

Identify and Mitigate Risks

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Generate risks and roadblocks
• Mitigate risks and roadblocks
• Define roadmap initiatives

This phase involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Workload subject matter experts

You know what you want to do, but what do you have to do?

What questions remain unanswered?

There are workload-level risks and roadblocks, and there are environment-level risks. This phase is focused primarily on environment-level risks and roadblocks, or those that are likely to span multiple workloads (but this is not hard and fast rule – anything that you deem worth discussing is worth discussing). The framework here calls for an open forum where all stakeholders – technical and non-technical, pro-cloud and anti-cloud, management and individual contributor – have an opportunity to articulate their concerns, however specific or general, and receive feedback and possible mitigation.

Start by soliciting feedback. You can do this over time or in a single session. Encourage anyone with an opinion to share it. Focus on those who are likely to have a perspective that will become relevant at some point during the creation of the cloud strategy and the execution of any migration. Explain the preliminary direction; highlight any major changes that you foresee. Remind participants that you are not looking for solutions (yet), but that you want to make sure you hear any and every concern as early as possible. You will get feedback and it will all be valuable.

Before cutting your participants loose, remind them that, as with all business decisions, the cloud comes with trade-offs. Not everyone will have every wish fulfilled, and in some cases, significant effort may be needed to get around a roadblock, risks may need to be accepted, and workloads that looked like promising candidates for one service model or another may not be able to realize that potential. This is a normal and expected part of the cloud vision process.

Once the risks and roadblocks conversation is complete, it is the core working group’s job to propose and validate mitigations. Not every risk can be completely resolved, but the cloud has been around for decades – chances are someone else has faced a similar challenge and made it through relatively unscathed. That work will inevitably result in initiatives for immediate execution. Those initiatives will form the core of the initiative roadmap that accompanies the completed Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Step 3.1

Generate risks and roadblocks

Activities

3.1.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.1.2 Generate mitigations

Identify and mitigate risks

Generate risks and roadblocks

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Define roadmap initiatives

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• IT management
• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Security
• Architecture

Outcomes of this step

• List of risks and roadblocks

Understand risks and roadblocks

Risk

• Something that could potentially go wrong.
• You can respond to risks by mitigating them:
  • Eliminate: take action to prevent the risk from causing issues.
  • Reduce: take action to minimize the likelihood/severity of the risk.
  • Transfer: shift responsibility for the risk away from IT, towards another division of the company.
  • Accept: where the likelihood or severity is low, it may be prudent to accept that the risk could come to fruition.

Roadblock

• There are things that aren’t “risks” that we care about when migrating to the cloud.
• We know, for example, that a complicated integration situation will create work items for any migration – this is not an “unknown.”
• We respond to roadblocks by generating work items.

3.1.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

1.5 hours

Input

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Output

• List of risks and roadblocks

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs
• Anyone with concerns about the cloud

1. Gather your core working group – and really anyone with an intelligent opinion on the cloud – into a single meeting space. Give the group 5-10 minutes to list anything they think could present a difficulty in transitioning workloads to the cloud. Write each risk/roadblock on its own sticky note. You will never be 100% exhaustive, but don’t let anything your users care about go unaddressed.
2. Once everyone has had time to write down their risks and roadblocks, have everyone share one by one. Make sure you get them all. Overlap in risks and roadblocks is okay! Group similar concerns together to give a sort of heat map of what your participants are concerned about. (This is called “affinity diagramming.”)
3. Assign names to these categories. Many of these categories will align with the strategy components discussed in the previous phase (governance, security, etc.) but some will be specific whether by nature or by degree.
4. Sort each of the individual risks into its respective category, collapsing any exact duplicates, and leaving room for notes and mitigations (see the next slide for a visual).

Understand risks and roadblocks

Step 3.2

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Activities

3.2.1 Generate mitigations

Identify and mitigate risks

Generate risks and roadblocks

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Define roadmap initiatives

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• List of mitigations

Is the public cloud less secure?

This is the key risk-related question that most cloud customers will have to answer at some point: does migrating to the cloud for some services increase their exposure and create a security problem?

As with all good questions, the answer is “it depends.” But what does it depend on? Consider these cloud risks and potential mitigations:

1. Misconfiguration: An error grants access to unauthorized parties (as happened to Capital One in 2019). This can be mitigated by careful configuration management and third-party tooling.
2. Unauthorized access by cloud provider/partner employees: Though rare, it is possible that a cloud provider or partner can be a vector for a breach. Careful contract language, choosing to own your own encryption keys, and a hybrid approach (storing data on-premises) are some possible ways to address this problem.
3. Unauthorized access to systems: Cloud services are designed to be accessed from anywhere and may be accessed by malicious actors. Possible mitigations include risk-based conditional access, careful identity access management, and logging and detection.

“The cloud is definitely more secure in that you have much more control, you have much more security tooling, much more visibility, and much more automation. So it is more secure. The caveat is that there is more risk. It is easier to accidentally expose data in the cloud than it is on-premises, but, especially for security, the amount of tooling and visibility you get in cloud is much more than anything we’ve had in our careers on-premises, and that’s why I think cloud in general is more secure.” –Abdul Kittana, Founder, ASecureCloud

Breach bests bank

No cloud provider can protect against every misconfiguration

Industry: Finance

Source: The New York Times, CNET

Background

Capital One is a major Amazon Web Services customer and is even featured on Amazon’s site as a case study. That case study emphasizes the bank’s commitment to the cloud and highlights how central security and compliance were. From the CTO: “Before we moved a single workload, we engaged groups from across the company to build a risk framework for the cloud that met the same high bar for security and compliance that we meet in our on-premises environments. AWS worked with us every step of the way.”

Complication

The cloud migration was humming along until July 2019, when the bank suffered a serious breach at the hands of a hacker. That hacker was able to steal millions of credit card applications and hundreds of thousands of Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, and Canadian social insurance numbers.

According to investigators and to AWS, the breach was caused by an open reverse proxy attack against a misconfigured web app firewall, not by an underlying vulnerability in the cloud infrastructure.

Results

Capital One reported that the breach was expected to cost it $150 million, and AWS fervently denied any blame. The US Senate got involved, as did national media, and Capital One’s CEO issued a public apology, writing, “I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected, and I am committed to making it right.”

It was a bad few months for IT at Capital One.

3.2.1 Generate mitigations

3-4.5 hours

Input

• Completed cloud vision assessments

Output

• List of risks and roadblocks

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Core working group
• Service owners/workload SMEs
• Anyone with concerns about the cloud

1. Recall the four mitigation strategies: eliminate, reduce, transfer, or accept. Keep these in mind as you work through the list of risks and roadblocks with the core working group. For every individual risk or roadblock raised in the initial generation session, suggest a specific mitigation. If the concern is “SaaS providers having access to confidential information,” a mitigation might be encryption, specific contract language, or proof of certifications (or all the above).
2. Work through this for each of the risks and roadblocks, identifying the steps you need to take that would satisfy your requirements as you understand them.
3. Once you have gone through the whole list – ideally with input from SMEs in particular areas like security, engineering, and compliance/legal – populate the Cloud Vision Workbook (tab 8) with the risks, roadblocks, and mitigations (sorted by category). Review tab 8 for an example of the output of this exercise.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Cloud Vision Workbook – mitigations

Step 3.3

Define roadmap initiatives

Activities

3.3.1 Generate roadmap initiatives

Identify and mitigate risks

Generate risks and roadblocks

Mitigate risks and roadblocks

Define roadmap initiatives

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Defined roadmap initiatives

3.3.1 Generate roadmap initiatives

1 hour

Input

• List of risk and roadblock mitigations

Output

• List of cloud initiatives

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Executing on your cloud vision will likely require you to undertake some key initiatives, many of which have already been identified as part of your mitigation exercise. On tab 8 of the Cloud Vision Workbook, review the mitigations you created in response to the risks and roadblocks identified. Initiatives should generally be assignable to a party and should have a defined scope/duration. For example, “assess all net new applications for cloud suitability” might not be counted as an initiative, but “design a cloud application assessment” would likely be.
2. Design a timeline appropriate for your specific needs. Generally short-term (less than 3 months), medium-term (3-6 months), and long-term (greater than 6 months) will work, but this is entirely based on preference.
3. Review and validate the parameters with the working group. Consider creating additional color-coding (highlighting certain tasks that might be dependent on a decision or have ongoing components).

Cloud Vision Workbook

Bridge the gap and create the vision

Build the foundations of your cloud vision

Phase 4

Phase 4

Bridge the Gap and Create the Vision

Phase 1

1.1 Generate goals and drivers

1.2 Explore cloud characteristics

1.3 Create a current state summary

1.4 Select workloads for analysis

Phase 2

2.1 Conduct workload assessments

2.2 Determine workload future states

Phase 3

3.1 Generate risks and roadblocks

3.2 Mitigate risks and roadblocks

3.3 Define roadmap initiatives

Phase 4

4.1 Review and assign work items

4.2 Finalize cloud decision framework

4.3 Create cloud vision

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Assign initiatives and propose timelines
• Build a delivery model rubric
• Build a service model rubric
• Built a support model rubric
• Create a cloud vision statement
• Map cloud workloads
• Complete the Cloud Vision presentation

This phase involves the following participants:

• IT management, the core working group, security, infrastructure, operations, architecture, engineering, applications, non-IT stakeholders

Step 4.1

Review and assign work items

Activities

4.1.1 Assign initiatives and propose timelines

Bridge the gap and create the vision

Review and assign work items

Finalize cloud decision framework

Create cloud vision

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• IT management

Outcomes of this step

• Populated cloud vision roadmap

4.1.1 Assign initiatives and propose timelines

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Once the list is populated, begin assigning responsibility for execution. This is not a RACI exercise, so focus on the functional responsibility. Once you have determined who is responsible, assign a timeline and include any notes. This will form the basis of a more formal project plan.
2. To assign the initiative to a party, consider 1) who will be responsible for execution and 2) if that responsibility will be shared. Be as specific as possible, but be sure to be consistent to make it easier for you to sort responsibility later on.
3. When assigning timelines, we suggest including the end date (when you expect the project to be complete) rather than the start date, though whatever you choose, be sure to be consistent. Make use of the notes column to record anything that you think any other readers will need to be aware of in the future, or details that may not be possible to commit to memory.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Step 4.2

Finalize cloud decision framework

Activities

4.2.1 Build a delivery model rubric

4.2.2 Build a service model rubric

4.2.3 Build a support model rubric

Bridge the gap and create the vision

Review and assign work items

Finalize cloud decision framework

Create cloud vision

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group

Outcomes of this step

• Cloud decision framework

4.2.1 Build a delivery model rubric

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group

1. Now that we have a good understanding of the cloud’s key characteristics, the relative suitability of different workloads for the cloud, and a good understanding of some of the risks and roadblocks that may need to be overcome if a cloud transition is to take place, it is time to formalize a delivery model rubric. Start by listing the delivery models on a white board vertically – public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud. Include a community cloud option as well if that is feasible for you. Strike any models that do not figure into your vision.
2. Create a table style rubric for each delivery model. Confer with the working group to determine what characteristics best define workloads suitable for each model. If you have a hybrid cloud option, you may consider workloads that are highly dynamic; a private cloud hosted on-premises may be more suitable for workloads that have extensive regulatory requirements.
3. Once the table is complete, include it in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Vision for the cloud future state (example)

Summary statement: Everything must go! Public cloud is a top priority. Anything that is not compatible (for whatever reason) with a public cloud deployment will be retained in a premises-based server closet (downgraded from a full datacenter). The private cloud does not align with the overall organizational vision, nor does a hybrid solution.

4.2.2 Build a service model rubric

1 hour

Input

• Output of workload assessments
• Output of risk and mitigation exercise

Output

• Service model rubric

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group

1. This next activity is like the delivery model activity, but covers the relevant cloud service models. On a whiteboard, make a vertical list of the cloud service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) that will be considered for workloads. If you have an order of preference, place your most preferred at the top, your least preferred at the bottom.
2. Describe the circumstances under which you would select each service model. Do your best to focus on differentiators. If a decision criterion appears for multiple service models, consider refining or excluding it. (For additional information, check out Info-Tech’s Reimagine IT Operations for a Cloud-First World blueprint.)
3. Create a summary statement to capture your overall service model position. See the next slide for an example. Note: this can be incorporated into your cloud vision statement, so be sure that it reflects your genuine cloud preferences.
4. Record the results in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Vision for the cloud future state (example)

Summary statement: SaaS will be the primary service model. All workloads will migrate to the public cloud where possible. Anything that cannot be migrated to SaaS will be migrated to PaaS. IaaS is a transitory step.

4.2.3 Build a support model rubric

1 hour

Input

• Results of the cloud workload assessments

Output

• Support model rubric

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Participants

• Core working group

1. The final rubric covered here is that for the support model. Where will you procure the skills necessary to ensure the vision’s proper execution? Much like the other rubric activities, write the three support models vertically (in order of preference, if you have one) on a whiteboard.
2. Next to each model, describe the circumstances under which you would select each support model. Focus on the dimensions: the duration of the engagement, specialization required, and flexibility required. If you have existing rules/practices around hiring consultants/MSPs, consider those as well.
3. Once you have a good list of decision criteria, form a summary statement. This should encapsulate your position on support models and should mention any notable criteria that will contribute to most decisions.
4. Record the results in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Vision for the cloud future state (example)

Summary statement: Most workloads will be managed in house. A consultant will be employed to facilitate the transition to micro-services in a cloud container environment, but this will be transitioned to in-house staff. An MSP will continue to manage backups and telephony.

Step 4.3

Create cloud vision

Activities

4.3.1 Create a cloud vision statement

4.3.2 Map cloud workloads

4.3.3 Complete the Cloud Vision Presentation

Review and assign work items

Finalize cloud decision framework

Create cloud vision

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• IT management

Outcomes of this step

Completed Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

4.3.1 Create a cloud vision statement

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Now that you know what service models are appropriate, it’s time to summarize your cloud vision in a succinct, consumable way. A good vision statement should have three components:
   • Scope: Which parts of the organization will the strategy impact?
   • Goal: What is the strategy intended to accomplish?
   • Key differentiator: What makes the new strategy special?
2. On a whiteboard, make a chart with three columns (one column for each of the features of a good mission statement). Have the group generate a list of words to describe each of the categories. Ideally, the group will produce multiple answers for each category.
3. Once you’ve gathered a few different responses for each category, have the team put their heads down and generate pithy mission statements that capture the sentiments underlying each category.
4. Have participants read their vision statements in front of the group. Use the rest of the session to produce a final statement. Record the results in the Cloud Strategy Executive Presentation.

Example vision statement outputs

“IT at ACME Corp. hereby commits to providing clients and end users with an unparalleled, productivity-enabling technology experience, leveraging, insofar as it is possible and practical, cloud-based services.”

“At ACME Corp. our employees and customers are our first priority. Using new, agile cloud services, IT is devoted to eliminating inefficiency, providing cutting-edge solutions for a fast-paced world, and making a positive difference in the lives of our colleagues and the people we serve.”

“As a global leader in technology, ACME Corp. is committed to taking full advantage of new cloud services, looking first to agile cloud options to optimize internal processes wherever efficiency gaps exist. Improved efficiency will allow associates to spend more time on ACME’s core mission: providing an unrivalled customer experience.”

Scope

Goal

Key differentiator

4.3.2 Map cloud workloads

1 hour

Input

• List of workloads
• List of acceptable service models
• List of acceptable migration paths

Output

• Workloads mapped by service model/migration path

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes

Participants

• Core working group

1. Now that you have defined your overall cloud vision as well as your service model options, consider aligning your service model preferences with your migration path preferences. Draw a table with your expected migration strategies across the top (retain, retire, rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, or some of these) and your expected service models across the side.
2. On individual sticky notes, write a list of workloads in your environment. In a smaller environment, this list can be exhaustive. Otherwise take advantage of the list you created as part of phase 1 along with any additional workloads that warrant discussion.
3. As a group, go through the list, placing the sticky notes first in the appropriate row based on their characteristics and the decision criteria that have already been defined, and then in the appropriate column based on the appropriate migration path. (See the next slide for an example of what this looks like.)
4. Record the results in the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation. Note: not every cell will be filled; some migration path/service model combinations are impossible or otherwise undesirable.

Cloud Vision Executive Presentation

Example cloud workload map

4.3.3 Complete the Cloud Vision Presentation

1 hour

Input

• List of cloud initiatives

Output

• Initiatives assigned by responsibility and timeline

Materials

• Cloud Vision Workbook

Participants

• Core working group

1. Open the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation to the second slide and review the templated executive brief. This comprises several sections (see the next slide). Populate each one:
   • Summary of the exercise
   • The cloud vision statement
   • Key cloud drivers
   • Risks and roadblocks
   • Top initiatives and next steps
2. Review the remainder of the presentation. Be sure to elaborate on any significant initiatives and changes (where applicable) and to delete any slides that you no longer require.

Cloud Vision Workbook

Sample cloud vision executive summary

• From [date to date], a cross-functional group representing IT and its constituents met to discuss the cloud.
• Over the course of the week, the group identified drivers for cloud computing and developed a shared vision, evaluated several workloads through an assessment framework, identified risks, roadblocks, and mitigations, and finally generated initiatives and next steps.
• From the process, the group produced a summary and a cloud suitability assessment framework that can be applied at the level of the workload.

Cloud Vision Statement

[Organization] will leverage public cloud solutions and retire existing datacenter and colocation facilities. This transition will simplify infrastructure administration, support, and security, while modernizing legacy infrastructure and reducing the need for additional capital expenditure.

Initiatives and next steps

• Close the datacenter and colocation site in favor of a SaaS-first cloud approach.
• Some workloads will migrate to infrastructure-as-a-service in the short term with the assistance of third-party consultants.

Document your cloud strategy

You did it!

Congratulations! If you’ve made it this far, you’ve successfully articulated a cloud vision, assessed workloads, developed an understanding (shared with your team and stakeholders) of cloud concepts, and mitigated risks and roadblocks that you may encounter along your cloud journey. From this exercise, you should understand your mission and vision, how your cloud plans will interact with any other relevant strategic plans, and what successful execution looks like, as well as developing a good understanding of overall guiding principles. These are several components of your overall strategy, but they do not comprise the strategy in its entirety.

How do you fix this?

First, validate the results of the vision exercise with your stakeholders. Socialize it and collect feedback. Make changes where you think changes should be made. This will become a key foundational piece. The next step is to formally document your cloud strategy. This is a separate project and is covered in the Info-Tech blueprint Document Your Cloud Strategy.

The vision exercise tells you where you want to go and offers some clues as to how to get there. The formal strategy exercise is a formal documentation of the target state, but also captures in detail the steps you’ll need to take, the processes you’ll need to refine, and the people you’ll need to hire.

A cloud strategy should comprise your organizational stance on how the cloud will change your approach to people and human resources, technology, and governance. Once you are confident that you can make and enforce decisions in these areas, you should consider moving on to Document Your Cloud Strategy. This blueprint, Define Your Cloud Vision, often serves as a prerequisite for the strategy documentation conversation(s).

Appendix

Summary of Accomplishment

Additional Support

Research Contributors

Related Info-Tech Research

Vendor Resources

Bibliography

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

You have now documented what you want from the cloud, what you mean when you say “cloud,” and some preliminary steps you can take to make your vision a reality.

You now have at your disposal a framework for identifying and evaluating candidates for their cloud suitability, as well as a series of techniques for generating risks and mitigations associated with your cloud journey. The next step is to formalize your cloud strategy using the takeaways from this exercise. You’re well on your way to a completed cloud strategy!

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com

1-888-670-8889

Additional Support

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech Workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.

Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

Generate drivers for cloud adoption

Work with stakeholders to understand the expected benefits of the cloud migration and how these drivers will impact the overall vision.

Conduct workload assessments

Assess your individual cloud workloads for their suitability as candidates for the cloud migration.

Bibliography

“2021 State of the Cloud Report.” Flexera, 2021. Web.

“2021 State of Upskilling Report.” Pluralsight, 2021. Web.

“AWS Snowmobile.” Amazon Web Services, n.d. Web.

“Azure products.” Microsoft, n.d. Web.

“Azure Migrate Documentation.” Microsoft, n.d. Web.

Bell, Harold. “Multi-Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud: What’s the Difference?” Nutanix, 2019. Web.

“Cloud Products.” Amazon Web Services, n.d. Web.

“COBIT 2019 Framework: Introduction and Methodology.” ISACA, 2019. Web.

Edmead, Mark T. “Using COBIT 2019 to Plan and Execute an Organization’s Transformation Strategy.” ISACA, 2020. Web.

Flitter, Emily, and Karen Weise. “Capital One Data Breach Compromises Data of Over 100 Million.” The New York Times, 29 July 2019. Web.

Gillis, Alexander S. “Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM).” TechTarget, 2021. Web.

“’How to Cloud’ with Capital One.” Amazon Web Services, n.d. Web.

“IBM Closes Landmark Acquisition of Red Hat for $34 Billion; Defines Open, Hybrid Cloud Future.” Red Hat, 9 July 2019. Web.

Mell, Peter, and Timothy Grance. “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing.” National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sept. 2011. Web.

Ng, Alfred. “Amazon Tells Senators it Isn't to Blame for Capital One Breach.” CNET, 2019. Web.

Orban, Stephen. “6 Strategies for Migrating Applications to the Cloud.” Amazon Web Services, 2016. Web.

Sullivan, Dan. “Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB).” TechTarget, 2021. Web.

“What Is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)?” Cisco, n.d. Web.

Choose Your Mobile Platform and Tools

Maximize the value of your mobile investments by prioritizing technology decisions on user experience, business priorities, and system quality.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Mobile is the way of working.

Workers require access to enterprise products, data, and services anywhere at anytime on any device. Give them the device-specific features, offline access, desktop-like interfaces, and automation capabilities they need to be productive.

To be successful, you need to instill a collaborative business-IT partnership. Only through this partnership will you be able to select the right mobile platform and tools to balance desired outcomes with enterprise security, performance, integration, quality, and other delivery capacity concerns.

Andrew Kum-Seun
Senior Research Analyst,
Application Delivery and Application Management
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Organizations see the value of mobile applications in improving productivity and reach of day-to-day business and IT operations. This motivates leaders to begin the planning of their first application.
• However, organizations often lack the critical foundational knowledge and skills to deliver and maintain high quality and valuable applications that meet business and user priorities and technical requirements.
• Mobile technologies and trends are continually evolving and maturing. It is hard to predict which trends will make a significant impact and to prepare current mobile investments to harness the value of these trends.

Common Obstacles

• Mobile applications can stress the stability, reliability and overall quality of your enterprise systems and services. They will also increase your security risks because of the exposure of your enterprise technology assets to unsecured networks and devices.
• High costs of entry may restrict what native features your users can have in their mobile experience. Workarounds may not be sufficient to offset the costs of certain native feature needs.
• Many operating models do not enable or encourage the collaboration required to fully understand user needs and behaviors and evaluate mobile opportunities and underlying operational systems from multiple perspectives.

Info-Tech's Approach

• Establish the right expectations. Understand your mobile users by learning their needs, challenges, and behaviors. Discuss the current state of your systems and your high priority non-functional requirements to determine what to expect from your mobile applications.
• Choose the right mobile platform approach and shortlist your mobile delivery solutions. Obtain a thorough view of the business and technical complexities of your mobile opportunities, including current mobile delivery capabilities and system compatibilities.
• Create your mobile roadmap. Describe the gradual rollout of your mobile technologies through minimal valuable products (MVPs).

Insight Summary

Overarching Info-Tech Insight

Treat your mobile applications as digital products. Digital products are continuously modernized to ensure they are fit-for-purpose, secured, accessible, and immersive. A successful mobile experience involves more than just the software and supporting system. It involves good training and onboarding, efficient delivery turnaround, and a clear and rational vision and strategy.

Phase 1: Set the Mobile Context

• Build applications your users need and desire – Design the right mobile application that enables your users to address their frustrations and productivity challenges.
• Maximize return on your technology investments – Build your mobile applications with existing web APIs, infrastructure, and services as much as possible.
• Prioritize mobile security, performance and integration requirements – Understand the unique security, performance, and integration influences has on your desired mobile user experience. Find the right balance of functional and non-functional requirements through business and IT collaboration.

Phase 2: Define Your Mobile Approach

• Start with a mobile web platform - Minimize disruptions to your existing delivery process and technical stack by building against common web standards. Select a hybrid platform or cross-platform if you need device hardware access or have complicated non-functional requirements.
• Focus your mobile solution decision on vendor support and functional complexity – Verify that your solution is not only compatible with the architecture, data, and policies of existing business systems, but satisfies IT's concerns with access to restricted technology and data, and with IT's ability to manage and operate your applications.
• Anticipate changes, defects & failures in your roadmap - Quickly shift your mobile roadmaps according to user feedback, delivery challenges, value, and stability.

Mobile is how the business works today

Mobile adoption continues to grow in part due to the need to be a mobile workforce, and the shift in customer behaviors. This reality pushed the industry to transform business processes and technologies to better support the mobile way of working.

Mobile Builds Interests
61%
Mobile devices drove 61% of visits to U.S. websites
Source: Perficient, 2021

Mobile Maintains Engagement
54%
Mobile devices generated 54.4% of global website traffic in Q4 2021.
Source: Statista, 2022

Mobile Drives Productivity
82%
According to 82% of IT executives, smartphones are highly important to employee productivity
Source: Samsung and Oxford Economics, 2022

Mobile applications enable and drive your digital business strategy

Organizations know the criticality of mobile applications in meeting key business and digital transformation goals, and they are making significant investments. Over half (58%) of organizations say their main strategy for driving application adoption is enabling mobile access to critical enterprise systems (Enterprise CIO, 2016). The strategic positioning and planning of mobile applications are key for success.

Mobile Can Motivate, Support and Drive Progress in Key Activities Underpinning Digital Transformation Goals

Goal: Enhance Customer Experience

• A shift from paper to digital communications
• Seamless, omni-channel client experiences across devices
• Create Digital interactive documents with sections that customers can customize to better understand their communications

Goal: Increase Workflow Throughput & Efficiency

• Digitized processes and use of data to improve process efficiency
• Modern IT platforms
• Automation through robotic process automation (RPA) where possible
• Use of AI and machine learning for intelligent automation

Source: Broadridge, 2022

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Define Your Digital Business Strategy blueprint.

Well developed mobile applications bring unique opportunities to drive more value

Info-Tech Insight

If you build it, they may not come. Design and build the applications your user wants and needs, and ensure users are properly onboarded and trained. Learn how your applications are leveraged, capture feedback from the user and system dashboards, and plan for enhancements, fixes, and modernizations.

Workers expect IT to deliver against their high mobile expectations

Workers want sophisticated mobile applications like what they see their peers and competitors use.

Why is IT considering building their own applications?

• Complex and Unique Workflows: Canned templates and shells are viewed as incompatible to the workflows required to complete worker responsibilities outside the office, with the same level of access to corporate data as on premise.
• Supporting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): Developing your own mobile applications around your security protocols and standards can help mitigate the risks with personal devices that are already in your workforce.
• Long-Term Architecture Misalignment: Outsourcing mobile development risks the mobile application misaligned with your quality standards or incompatible with other enterprise and third-party systems.

Continuously meeting aggressive user expectations will not be easy

Value Quickly Wears Off
39.9% of users uninstall an application because it is not in use.
40%
Source: n=2,000, CleverTap, 2021

Low Tolerance to Waiting
Keeping a user waiting for 3 seconds is enough to dissatisfy 43% of users.
43%
Source: AppSamurai, 2018

Quick Fixes Are Paramount
44% of defects are found by users
44%
Source: Perfecto Mobile, 2014

Mobile emphasizes the importance of good security, performance, and integration

Today's mobile workers are looking for new ways to get more work done quickly. They want access to enterprise solutions and data directly on their mobile devices, which can reside on multiple legacy systems and in the cloud and third-party infrastructure. This presents significant performance, integration, and security risks.

Accept change as the norm

IT is challenged with keeping up with disruptive technologies, such as mobile, which are arriving and changing faster and faster.

What is the issue? Mobile priorities, concepts, and technologies do not remain static. For example, current Google's Pixels benefit from at least three versions of Android updates and at least three years of monthly security patches after their release (NextPit, 2022). Keeping up to date with anything mobile is difficult if you do not have the right delivery and product management practices in place.

What is the impact on IT? Those who fail to prepare for changing requirements and technologies will quickly run into maintainability, extensibility, and flexibility issues. Mobile applications will quickly become stale and misaligned with the maturity of other enterprise infrastructure and applications.

Continuously look at the trends, vendor roadmaps, and your user's feedback to envision where your mobile applications should be. Learning from your past attempts gives you insights on the opportunities and impacts changes will have on your people, process, and technology.

How do I address this issue? A well-defined mobile vision and roadmap ensures your initiatives are aligned with your holistic business and technology strategies, the right problem is being solved, and resources are available to deliver high priority changes.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision blueprint.

Address the difficulties in managing enterprise mobile technologies

Adaptability During Development

Teams must be ready to alter their mobile approach when new insights and issues arise during and after the delivery of your mobile application and its updates.

High Cybersecurity Standards

Cybersecurity should be a top priority given the high security exposure of mobiles and the sensitive data mobile applications need to operate. Role-based access, back-up systems, advanced scanning, and protection software and encryption should all be implemented.

Integration with Other Systems

Your application will likely be integrated with other systems to expand service offerings and optimize performance and user experience. Your enterprise integration strategy ensures all systems connect against a common pattern with compatible technologies.

Finding the Right Mobile Developers

Enterprise mobile delivery requires a broad skillset to build valuable applications against extensive non-functional requirements in complex and integration environments. The right resources are even harder to find when native applications are preferred over web-based ones.

Source: Radoslaw Szeja, Netguru, 2022.

Build and manage the right experience by treating mobile as digital products

Digital products are continuously modernized to ensure they are fit-for-purpose, secured, insightful, accessible, and interoperable. A good experience involves more than just technology.

First, deliver the experience end users want and expect by designing the application against digital application principles.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Modernize Your Applications blueprint.

Then, deliver a long-lasting experience by supporting your applications with key governance and management capabilities.

• Product Strategy and Roadmap
• External Relationships
• User Adoption and Organizational Change Management
• Funding
• Knowledge Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Product Governance
• Maintenance & Enhancement
• User Support
• Managing and Governing Data
• Requirements Analysis and Design
• Research & Development

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Make the Case for Product Delivery blueprint.

Choose Your Mobile Platform and Tools

Maximize the value of your mobile investments by prioritizing technology decisions on user experience, business priorities, and system quality.

	WORKFLOW
1. Capture Your User Personas and Journey
2. Select Your Platform
3. Shortlist Your Solutions

Make user experience (UX) the standard

User experience (UX) focuses on a user's emotions, beliefs, and physical and psychological responses that occur before, during, or after interacting with a service or product.

For a mobile application to be meaningful, the functions, aesthetics and content must be:

• Usable
  • Users can intuitively navigate through your mobile application and complete their desired tasks.
• Desirable
  • The application elements are used to evoke positive emotions and appreciation.
• Accessible
  • Users can easily use your mobile application, including those with disabilities.
• Valuable
  • Users find the content useful, and it fulfills a need.

Enable a greater experience with UX-driven thinking

Designing for a high-quality experience requires more than just focusing on the UI. It also requires the merging of multiple business, technical, and social disciplines in order to create an immersive, practical, and receptive application. The image on the right explains the disciplines involved in UX. This is critical for ensuring users have a strong desire to use the mobile application, it is adequately supported technically, and it supports business objectives.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Implement and Mature Your User Experience Design Practice blueprint.

Source: Marky Roden, Xomino, 2018

Define the mobile experience your end users want

• Anytime, Anywhere
  • The user can access, update and analyze data and corporate products and services whenever they want, in all networks, and on any device.
• Hands-Off and Automated
  • The application can perform various workflows and tasks without the user's involvement and notify the user when specific triggers are hit.
• Personalized and Insightful
  • Content presentation and subject are tailored for the user based on specific inputs from the user, device hardware, or predicted actions.
• Integrated Ecosystem
  • The application supports a seamless experience across various third-party and enterprise applications and services the user needs.
• Visually Pleasing and Fulfilling
  • The UI is intuitive and aesthetically gratifying, with little security and performance trade-offs to use the full breadth of its functions and services.

Each mobile platform has its own take on the mobile native experience. The choice ultimately depends on whether the costs and effort are worth the anticipated value.

Mobile value is dependent on the platform you choose

What is a platform?

"A platform is a set of software and a surrounding ecosystem of resources that helps you to grow your business. A platform enables growth through connection: its value comes not only from its own features, but from its ability to connect external tools, teams, data, and processes." (Source: Emilie Nøss Wangen, 2021) In the mobile context, applications in a platform execute and communicate through a loosely-coupled API architecture, whether the supporting system is managed and supported by your organization or by third-party providers.

Web

Mobile web applications are deployed and executed within the mobile web browser. They are often developed with a combination of web and scripting languages, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Web often takes two forms on mobile:

• Progressive Web Applications (PWA)
• Mobile Web Sites

Hybrid

Hybrid applications are developed with web technologies but are deployed as native applications. The code is wrapped using a framework so that it runs locally within a native container. It uses the device's browser runtime engine to support more sophisticated designs and features than to the web approach.

Cross-Platform

Cross-platform applications are developed within a distinct programming or scripting environment that uses its own scripting language (often like web languages) and APIs. The solution compiles the code into device-specific builds for native deployment.

Native

Native applications are developed and deployed to specific devices and OSs using platform-specific software development kits (SDKs) provided by the operating system vendors. The programming language and framework are dictated by the targeted device, such as Java for Android.

Start mobile development on a mobile web platform

Start with what you have: begin with a mobile web platform to minimize impacts to your existing delivery skill sets and technical stack while addressing business needs. Resort to a hybrid first. Then consider a cross-platform application if you require device access or need to meet specific non-functional requirements.

Why choose a mobile web platform?

Other Notable Benefits with Web Languages

• Modern browsers in most mobile devices can execute and render many mobile features developed in web languages, allowing for greater portability and sophistication of code across multiple devices. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of performance since the browser's runtime engine will not perform as well as a native engine.
• Web languages are well known by developers, minimizing skills and resourcing impacts. Consequently, changes can be quickly accommodated and updated uniformly across all end users.

Select your mobile platform

Drive your mobile platform selection against user-centric needs (e.g. device access, aesthetics) and enterprise-centric needs (e.g. security, system performance).

Understand the common attributes of a mobile delivery solution

• Source Code Management – Built-in or having the ability to integrate with code management solutions for branching, merging, and versioning. Debugging and coding assistance capabilities may be available.
• Single Code Base – Capable of programming in a standard coding and scripting language for deployment into several platforms and devices. This code base is aligned to a common industry framework (e.g. AngularJS, Java) or a vendor-defined one.
• Out-of-the-Box Connectors & Plug-ins – Pre-built APIs enhance the solution's capabilities with third-party tools and systems to deliver and manage high quality and valuable mobile applications.
• Emulators – Ability to virtualize an application's execution on a target platform and device.
• Support for Native Features – Supports plug-ins and APIs for access to device-specific features.

What are mobile delivery solutions?

A mobile delivery solution provides the tools, resources, and support to enable or build your mobile application. It can provide pre-built applications, vendor supported components to allow some configurations, or resources for full stack customizations. Solutions can be barebone software development kits (SDKs), or comprehensive suites offering features to support the entire software delivery lifecycle, such as:

• Mobile application management
• Testing and publishing to app stores
• Content management
• Cloud hosting
• Application performance management

Info-Tech Insight

Mobile enablement and development capabilities are already embedded in many common productivity tools and enterprise applications, such as Microsoft PowerApps and ERP modules. They can serve as a starting point in the initial rollout of new management and governance practices without the need to acquire new tools.

Select your mobile delivery solutions

1. Set the scope of your framework.

• The initial context of this framework is based on the mobile functions needed to support your desired mobile experience and on the current state of your enterprise and 3rd party systems.

Optimize your software delivery process

Mobile brings new delivery and management challenges that are often difficult for organizations that are tied to legacy systems, hindered by rigid and slow delivery lifecycles, and are unable to adopt leading-edge technologies. Many of these challenges stem from the fact that mobile is a significant shift from desktop development:

• Mobile devices and operating systems are heavily fragmented, especially in the Android space.
• Test coverage is significantly expanded to include physical environments and multiple network connections.
• Mobile devices do not have the same performance capabilities and memory storage as their desktop counterparts.
• The user interface must be strategically designed to accommodate the limited screen size.
• Mobile applications are highly susceptible to security breaches.
• Mobile users often expect quick turnaround time on fixes and enhancements due to continuously changing technology, business priorities, and user needs.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Modernize Your SDLC blueprint.

How should the process change?

• Cross-functional collaboration – Bringing business and IT together at the most opportune times to clarify user needs and business priorities, and set realistic expectations given technology and capacity constraints. The appropriate tactics and techniques are used to improve decision making and delivery effectiveness according to the type of work.
• Iterative delivery – Frequent delivery of progressive changes minimizes the risk of low-quality features by containing and simplifying scope, and enables responsive turnarounds of fixes, enhancements, and priority changes.
• Feedback loops –Mobile application owners constantly review, update and refine their backlog of mobile features and changes to reflect user feedback and system performance metrics. Delivery teams proactively prepare the application for future scaling based on lessons and feedback learned from earlier releases.

Achieve mobile success with MVPs

By delivering mobile capabilities in small iterations, teams recognize value sooner and reduce accumulated risk. Both benefits are realized as the iteration enters validation testing and release.

An MVP focuses on a small set of functions, involves minimal possible effort to deliver a working and valuable solution, and is designed to satisfy a specific user group. Its purpose is to:

• Maximize learning.
• Evaluate the value and acceptance of mobile applications.
• Inform the building of a mobile delivery practice.

The build-measure-learn loop suggests mobile delivery teams should perpetually take an idea and develop, test, and validate it with the mobile development solution, then expand on the MVP using the lessons learned and evolving ideas. In this sense the MVP is just the first iteration in the loop.

Gauge the value with the right metrics

Metrics are a powerful way to drive behavior change in your organization. But metrics are highly prone to creating unexpected outcomes so they must be used with great care. Use metrics judiciously to avoid gaming or ambivalent behavior, productivity loss, and unintended consequences.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively blueprint.

What should I measure?

1. Mobile Application Engagement, Retention and User Satisfaction
   1. The activeness of users on the applications, the number of returning users, and the happiness of the users.
   2. Example: Number of tasks completed, number of active and returning users, session length and intervals, user satisfaction
2. Value Driven from Mobile Applications
   1. The business value that the user directly or indirectly receives with the mobile application.
   2. Example: Mobile application revenue, business operational costs, worker productivity, business reputation and image
3. Delivery Throughput and Quality
   1. The health and quality of your mobile applications throughout their lifespan and the speed to deliver working applications that meet stakeholder expectations.
   2. Example: Frequency of release, lead time, request turnaround, escaped defects, test coverage.

Use Info-Tech's diagnostic to evaluate the reception of your mobile applications

Info-Tech's Application Portfolio Assessment (APA) Diagnostic is a canned end-user satisfaction survey used to evaluate your application portfolio health to support data-driven decisions.

USE THE PROGRAM DIAGNOSTIC TO:

• Assess the importance and satisfaction of enterprise applications.
• Solicit feedback from your end users on applications being used.
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your current applications.
• Perform a high-level application rationalization initiative.

INTEGRATE DIAGNOSTIC RESULTS TO:

• Target which applications to analyze in greater detail.
• Expand on the initial application rationalization results with a more comprehensive and business-value-focused criteria.

Grow your mobile delivery practice

Level 1: Mobile Delivery Foundations

You understand the opportunities and impacts mobile has on your business operations and its disruptive nature on your enterprise systems. Your software delivery lifecycle was optimized to incorporate the specific practices and requirements needed for mobile. A mobile platform was selected based on stakeholder needs that are weighed against current skillsets, high priority non-functional requirements, the available capacity and scalability of your stack, and alignment to your current delivery process.

Level 2: Scaled Mobile Delivery

New features and mobile use cases are regularly emerging in the industry. Ensuring your mobile platform and delivery process can easily scale to incorporate constantly changing mobile features and technologies is key. This can help minimize the impact these changes will have on your mobile stack and the resulting experience.

Achieving this state requires three competencies: mobile security, performance optimization, and integration practices.

Level 3: Leading-Edge Mobile Delivery

Many of today's mobile trends involve, in one form or another, hardware components on the mobile device (e.g., NFC receivers, GPS, cameras). You understand the scope of native features available on your end user's mobile device and the required steps and capabilities to enable and leverage them.

Hit a home run with your stakeholders

Use a data-driven approach to select the right tooling vendor for your needs – fast.

Investing time improving your software selection methodology has big returns.

Info-Tech Insight

Not all software selection projects are created equal – some are very small, some span the entire enterprise. To ensure that IT is using the right framework, understand the cost and complexity profile of the application you're looking to select. Info-Tech's Rapid Application Selection Framework approach is best for commodity and mid-tier enterprise applications; selecting complex applications is better handled by the methodology in Info-Tech's Implement a Proactive and Consistent Vendor Selection Process.

Pitch your mobile delivery approach with Info-Tech's template

Communicate the justification of your approach to mobile applications with Info-Tech's Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template:

• Level set your mobile application goals and objectives by weighing end user expectations with technical requirements.
• Define the high priority opportunities for mobile applications.
• Educate decision makers of the limitations and challenges of delivering specific mobile experiences with the various mobile platform options.
• Describe your framework to select the right mobile platform and delivery tools.
• Lay out your mobile delivery roadmap and initiatives.

INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

Info-Tech's methodology for mobile platform and delivery solution selection

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 6 to 9 calls over the course of 2 to 3 months.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Phase 1

Set the Mobile Context

Choose Your Mobile Platform and Tools

This phase will walk you through the following steps:

• Step 1.1 – Build Your Mobile Backlog
• Step 1.2 – Identify Your Technical Needs
• Step 1.3 – Define Your Non-Functional Requirements

This phase involves the following participants:

• Applications Manager
• Product and Platform Owners
• Software Delivery Teams
• Business and IT Leaders

Step 1.1

Build Your Mobile Backlog

Activities

1.1.1 Generate user personas with empathy maps

1.1.2 Build your mobile application canvas

1.1.3 Build your mobile backlog

Set the Mobile Context

This step involves the following participants:

• Applications Manager
• Product and Platform Owners
• Software Delivery Teams
• Business and IT Leaders

Outcomes of this step

• User personas
• Mobile objectives and metrics
• Mobile opportunity backlog

Users expect your organization to support their mobile way of working

Today, users expect sophisticated and personalized features, immersive interactions, and cross-platform capabilities from their mobile applications and be able to access information and services anytime, anywhere and on any device. These demands are pushing organizations to become more user-driven, placing greater importance on user experience (UX) with enterprise-grade technologies.

How has technologies evolved to easily enable mobile capabilities?

• Desktop-Like Features
  • Native-like features, such as geolocation and local caching, are supported through web language or third-party plugins and extensions.
• Extendable & Scalable
  • Plug-and-play architecture is designed to allow software delivery teams to explore new use cases and mobile capabilities with out-of-the-box connectors and/or customizable REST APIs.
• Low Barrier to Entry
  • Low- and no-code development tools, full-stack solutions, and plug-and-play architectures allow non-technical users to easily build and implement applications without direct IT involvement.
• Templates & Shells
  • Vendors provide UI templates and application shells that contain pre-built native features and multiple aesthetic layouts in a publishing-friendly and configurable way.
• Personalized Content
  • Content can be uniquely tailored to a user's preference or be automatically generated based on the user's profile or activity history.
• Hands-Off Operations
  • Many mobile solutions operate in a as-a-service model where the underlying and integrated technologies are managed by the vendor and abstracted away.

Make user experience (UX) the standard

User experience (UX) focuses on a user's emotions, beliefs, and physical and psychological responses that occur before, during, or after interacting with a service or product.

For a mobile application to be a meaningful experience, the functions, aesthetics and content must be:

• Usable
  • Users can intuitively navigate through your mobile application and complete their desired tasks.
• Desirable
  • The application elements are used to evoke positive emotions and appreciation.
• Accessible
  • Users can easily use your mobile application, including those with disabilities.
• Valuable
  • Users find the content useful, and it fulfills a need.

Enable a greater experience with UX-driven thinking

Designing for a high-quality experience requires more than just focusing on the UI. It also requires the merging of multiple business, technical, and social disciplines in order to create an immersive, practical, and receptive application. The image on the right explains the disciplines involved in UX. This is critical for ensuring users have a strong desire to use the mobile application, it is adequately supported technically, and it supports business objectives.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Implement and Mature Your User Experience Design Practice blueprint.

Source: Marky Roden, Xomino, 2018

UX-driven mobile apps bring together a compelling UI with valuable functionality

Info-Tech Insight

Organizations often over-rotate on the UI. Receptive and satisfying applications require more than just pretty pictures, bold colors, and flashy animations. UX-driven mobile applications require the seamless merging of enticing design elements and valuable functions that are specifically tailored to the behaviors of the users. Take a deep look at how each design element and function is used and perceived by the user, and how your application can sufficiently support user needs.

UI-Function Balance to Achieve Highly Satisfying Mobile Applications

An application's UI and function both contribute to UX, but they do so in different ways.

• The UI generates the visual, audio, and vocal cues to draw the attention of users to key areas of the application while stimulating the user's emotions.
• Functions give users the means to satisfy their needs effortlessly.

Finding the right balance of UI and function is dependent on the organization's understanding of user emotions, needs, and tendencies. However, these factors are often left out of an application's design. Having the right UX competencies is key in assuring user behaviors are appropriately accommodated early in the delivery process.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Modernize Your Corporate Website to Drive Business Value blueprint.

Focus your efforts on all items that drive high user experience and satisfaction

UX-driven mobile applications involve all interaction points and system components working together to create an immersive experience while being actively supported by delivery and operations teams. Many organizations commonly focus on visual and content design to improve the experience, but this is only a small fraction of the total UX design. Look beyond the surface to effectively enhance your application's overall UX.

Use personas to envision who will be using your mobile application

What Are Personas?

Personas are detailed descriptions of the targeted audience of your mobile application. It represents a type of user in a particular scenario. Effective personas:

• Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups.
• Give a clear picture of the typical user's behavior.
• Aid in uncovering critical features and functionalities.
• Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values.

Why Are Personas Important to UX?

They are important because they help:

• Focus the development of mobile application features on the immediate needs of the intended audience.
• Detail the level of customization needed to ensure content is valuable to and resonates with the user.
• Describe how users may behave when certain audio and visual stimulus are triggered from the mobile application.
• Outline the special design considerations required to meet user accessibility needs.

Key Elements of a Persona:

• Professional and Technical Skills and Experiences (e.g., knowledge of mobile applications, area of expertise)
• Persona Group (e.g., executives)
• Technological Environment of User (e.g., devices, browsers, network connection)
• Demographics (e.g., nationality, age, language spoken)
• Typical Behaviors and Tendencies (e.g., goes to different website when cannot find information in 20 seconds)
• Purpose of Using the Mobile Application (e.g., search for information, submit registration form)

Create empathy maps to gain a deeper understanding of stakeholder personas

Empathy mapping draws out the characteristics, motivations, and mannerisms of a potential end user.

Source: XPLANE, 2017

Empathy mapping focuses on identifying the problems, ambitions, and frustrations they are looking to resolve and describes their motivations for wanting to resolve them. This analysis helps your teams:

• Better understand the reason behind the struggles, frustrations and motivators through a user's perspective.
• Verify the accuracy of assertions made about the user.
• Pinpoint the specific problem the mobile application will be designed to solve and the constraints to its successful adoption and on-going use.
• Read more about empathy mapping and download the empathy map PDF template here.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Use Experience Design to Drive Empathy with the Business blueprint.

1.1.1 Generate user personas with empathy maps

1-3 hours

1. Download the Empathy Map Canvas and draw the map on a whiteboard or project it on the screen.
2. Choose an end user to be the focus of your empathy map. Using sticky notes, fill out the sections of the empathy map in the following order:
   1. Start by filling out the goals section. State who the subject of the empathy map will be and what activity or task you would like them to do.
      1. Focus on activities and tasks that may benefit from mobile.
   2. Next, complete the outer sections in clockwise order (see, say, do, hear). The purpose of this is to think in terms of what the subject of your empathy map is observing, sensing, and experiencing.
      1. Indicate the mobile devices and OS users will likely use and the environments they will likely be in (e.g., places with poor connections)
      2. Discuss accessibility needs and how user prefer to consume content.
   3. Last, complete the inner circle of the empathy map (pains and gains). Since you spent the last step of the exercise thinking about the external influences on your stakeholder, you can think about how those stimuli affect their emotions.
3. Document your end user persona into Info-Tech's Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template.

1.1.1 cont'd

Download the Empathy Map Canvas

Many business priorities are driving mobile

Mobile Applications

• Product Roadmap
  • Upcoming enterprise technology releases and updates offer mobile capabilities to expand its access to a broader userbase.
• Cost Optimization
  • Maximizing business value in processes and technologies through disciplined and strategic cost and spending reduction practices with mobile applications.
• Competitive Differentiation
  • Developing and optimizing your organization's distinct products and services quickly with mobile applications.
• Digital Transformation
  • Transitioning processes, data and systems to a digital environment to broaden access to enterprise data and services anywhere at anytime.
• Operational Efficiency
  • Improving software delivery and business process throughput by increasing worker productivity with mobile applications.
• Other Business Priorities
  • New corporate products and services, business model changes, application rationalization and other priorities may require modernization, innovation and a mobile way of working.

Focus on the mobile business and end user problem, not the solution

People are naturally solution-focused. The onus isn't on them to express their needs in the form of a problem statement!

When refining your mobile problem statement, attempt to answer the following four questions:

• Who is impacted?
• What is the (user or organizational) challenge that needs to be addressed?
• Where does it happen?
• Why does it matter?

There are many ways of writing problem statements, a clear approach follows the format:

• "Our (who) has the problem that (what) when (where). Our solution should (why)."
• Example: "Our system analysts has the problem that new tickets take too long to update when working on user requests. Our approach should enable the analyst to focus on working with customers and not on administration."

Adapted from: "Design Problem Statements – What and How to Frame Them"

How to write a vision statement

It's ok to dream a little!

When thinking about a vision statement, think about:

• Who is it for?
• What does the customer need?
• What can we do for them?
• And why is this special?

There are different statement templates available to help form your vision statements. Some include:

1. For [our target customer], who [customer's need], the [product] is a [product category or description] that [unique benefits and selling points]. Unlike [competitors or current methods], our product [main differentiators]. (Crossing the Chasm)
2. "We believe (in) a [noun: world, time, state, etc.] where [persona] can [verb: do, make, offer, etc.], for/by/with [benefit/goal].
3. To [verb: empower, unlock, enable, create, etc.] [persona] to [benefit, goal, future state].
4. Our vision is to [verb: build, design, provide], the [goal, future state], to [verb: help, enable, make it easier to...] [persona]."

(Numbers 2-4 from: How to define a product vision)

Info-Tech Best Practice

A vision shouldn't be so far out that it doesn't feel real and so short term that it gets bogged down in minutiae and implementation details. Finding that right balance will take some trial and error and will be different depending on your organization.

Ensure mobile supports ongoing value delivery and stakeholder expectations

Success hinges on your team's ability to deliver business value. Well-developed mobile applications instill stakeholder confidence in ongoing business value delivery and stakeholder buy-in, provided proper expectations are set and met.

Business value defines the success criteria of an organization, and it is interpreted from four perspectives:

• Profit Generation – The revenue generated from a business capability with mobile applications.
• Cost Reduction – The cost reduction when performing business capabilities with mobile applications.
• Service Enablement – The productivity and efficiency gains of internal business operations with mobile applications.
• Customer and Market Reach – Metrics measuring the improved reach and insights of the business in existing or new markets.

See our Build a Value Measurement Framework blueprint for more information about business value definition.

Set realistic mobile goals

Mobile applications enables the exploration of new and different ways to improve worker productivity and deliver business value. However, the realities of mobile applications may limit your ability to meet some of your objectives:

• On the day of installation, the average retention rate for public-facing applications was 25.3%. By day 30, the retention rate drops to 5.7%. (Source: Statista, 2020)
• 63% of 3,335 most popular Android mobile applications on the Google Play Store contained open-source components with known security vulnerabilities and other pervasive security concerns including exposing sensitive data (Source: Synopsys, 2021)
• 62% of users would delete the application because of performance issues, such as crashes, freezes and other errors (Source: Intersog, 2021).

These realities are not guaranteed to occur or impede your ability to deliver valuable mobile applications, but they can lead to unachievable expectations. Ensure your stakeholders are not oversold on advertised benefits and hold you accountable for unrealistic objectives. Recognize that the organization must also change how it works and operates to see the full benefit and adoption of mobile applications and overcome the known and unknown challenges and hurdles that often come with mobile delivery.

Benchmarks present enticing opportunities, but should be used to set reasonable expectations

66%
Improve Market Reach
66% of the global population uses a mobile device
Source: DataReportal, 2021

20%
Connected Workers are More Productive
Nearly 20 percent of mobile professionals estimate they miss more than three hours of working time a week not being able to get connected to the internet
Source: iPass, 2017

80%
Increase Brand Recognition
80% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies whose mobile sites of apps help them easily find answers to their questions
Source: Google, 2018

Gauge the value with the right metrics

Metrics are a powerful way to drive behavior change in your organization. But metrics are highly prone to creating unexpected outcomes so they must be used with great care. Use metrics judiciously to avoid gaming or ambivalent behavior, productivity loss, and unintended consequences.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively blueprint.

What should I measure?

1. Mobile Application Engagement, Retention and User Satisfaction
   • The activeness of users on the applications, the number of returning users, and the happiness of the users.
   • Example: Number of tasks completed, number of active and returning users, session length and intervals, user satisfaction
2. Value Driven from Mobile Applications
   • The business value that the user directly or indirectly receives with the mobile application.
   • Example: Mobile application revenue, business operational costs, worker productivity, business reputation and image
3. Delivery Throughput and Quality
   • The health and quality of your mobile applications throughout their lifespan and the speed to deliver working applications that meet stakeholder expectations.
   • Example: Frequency of release, lead time, request turnaround, escaped defects, test coverage.

Use Info-Tech's diagnostic to evaluate the reception of your mobile applications

Info-Tech's Application Portfolio Assessment (APA) Diagnostic is a canned end user satisfaction survey used to evaluate your application portfolio health to support data-driven decisions.

USE THE PROGRAM DIAGNOSTIC TO:

• Assess the importance and satisfaction of enterprise applications.
• Solicit feedback from your end users on applications being used.
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your current applications.
• Perform a high-level application rationalization initiative.

INTEGRATE DIAGNOSTIC RESULTS TO:

• Target which applications to analyze in greater detail.
• Expand on the initial application rationalization results with a more comprehensive and business-value-focused criteria.

Use a canvas to define key elements of your mobile initiative

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision blueprint.

1.1.2 Build your mobile application canvas

1-3 hours

1. Complete the following fields to build your mobile application canvas:
   • Mobile application initiative name
   • Mobile application owner
   • Parent initiative name
   • Problem that mobile applications are intending to solve and your vision. See the outcome from the previous exercise.
   • Mobile application business goals and metrics.
   • Capabilities, processes and application systems involved
   • Primary customers/users (For additional help with your product personas, download and complete to Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision.)
2. Stakeholders
3. Document your findings and discussions into Info-Tech's Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template.

Download the Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template

1.1.2 cont'd

Create your mobile backlog

Your backlog gives you a holistic understanding of the demand for mobile applications across your organization.

Find your mobile opportunities

Modern mobile technologies enable users to access, analyze and change data anywhere with native device features, which opens the door to enhanced processes and new value sources.

Examples of Mobile Opportunities:

• Mobile Payment
  • Cost alternative to credit card transaction fees.
  • Loyalty systems are updated upon payment without need of a physical card.
  • Quicker completion of transactions.
• Inventory Management
  • Update inventory database when shipments arrive or deliveries are made.
  • Inform retailers and consumers of current stock on website.
  • Alert staff of expired or outdated products.
• Quick and Small Data Transfer
  • Embed tags into posters to transfer URIs, which sends users to sites containing product or location information.
  • Replace entry tags, fobs, or smart cards at doors.
  • Exchange contact details.
• Location Sensitive Information
  • Proactively send promotions and other information (e.g. coupons, event details) to users within a defined area.
  • Inform employees of nearby prospective clients.
• Supply Chain Management
  • Track the movement and location of goods and delivery trucks.
  • Direct drivers to the most optimal route.
  • Location-sensitive billing apps such as train and bus ticket purchases.
• Education and Learning
  • Educate users about real-world objects and places with augmented books and by pushing relevant learning materials.
  • Visualize theories and other text with dynamic 3D objects.
• Augmented Reality (AR)
  • Provide information about the user's surroundings and the objects in the environment through the mobile device.
  • Interactive and immersive experiences with the inclusion of virtual reality.
• Architecture and Planning
  • Visualize historic buildings or the layout of structural projects and development plans.
  • Develop a digital tour with location-based audio initiated with location-based services or a camera.
• Navigation
  • Provide directions to users to navigate and provide contextual travelling instructions.
  • Push traffic notifications and route changes to travelling users.
• Tracking User Movement
  • Predict the future location of users based on historic information and traffic modelling.
  • Proactively push information to users before they reach their destination.

1.1.3 Build your mobile backlog

1-3 hours

1. As a group, discuss the use and value mobile already has within your organization for each persona.
   1. What are some of the apps being used?
   2. What enterprise systems and applications are already exposed to the web and accessible by mobile devices?
   3. How critical is mobile to business operations, marketing campaigns, etc.?
2. Discuss how mobile can bring additional business value to other areas of your organization for each persona.
   1. Can mobile enhance your customer reach? Do your customers care that your services are offered through mobile?
   2. Are employees asking for better access to enterprise systems in order to improve their productivity?
3. Write your mobile opportunities in the following form: As a [end user persona], I want to [process or capability to enable with mobile applications], so that [organizational benefit]. Prioritize each opportunity against feasibility, desirability, and viability.
4. Document your findings and discussions into Info-Tech's Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template.

Manage your mobile backlog

Your backlog stores and organizes your mobile opportunities at various stages of readiness. It must be continuously refined to address new requests, maintenance and changing priorities.

3 – IDEAS
Composed of raw, vague, and potentially large ideas that have yet to go through any formal valuation.

2 – QUALIFIED
Researched and qualified opportunities awaiting refinement.

1 READY
Discrete, refined opportunities that are ready to be placed in your team's delivery plans.

Adapted from Essential Scrum

A well-formed backlog can be thought of as a DEEP backlog

• Detailed Appropriately: opportunities are broken down and refined as necessary
• Emergent: The backlog grows and evolves over time as opportunities are added and removed.
• Estimated: The effort an opportunity requires is estimated at each tier.
• Prioritized: The opportunity's value and priority are determined at each tier.

(Source Perforce, 2018)

See our Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision for more information on backlog practices.

Step 1.2

Identify Your Technical Needs

Activities

1.2.1 Discuss your mobile needs

1.2.2 Conduct a technical assessment

Set the Mobile Context

This step involves the following participants:

• Applications Manager
• Product and Platform Owners
• Software Delivery Teams
• Business and IT Leaders

Outcomes of this step

• List of mobile features to enable the desired mobile experience
• System current assessment

Describe your desired mobile experiences with journey maps

A journey map tells the story of the user's experience with an existing or prospective product or service, starting with a trigger, through the process of engagement, to create an outcome. Journey maps can focus on a particular part of the user's or the entire experience with your organization's products or services. All types of maps capture key interactions and motivations of the user in chronological order.

Why are journey maps an important for mobile application delivery?

Everyone has their own preferred method for completing their tasks on mobile devices – often, what differentiates one persona from another has to do with how users privately behave. Understand that the activities performed outside of IT's purview develop context for your persona's pain points and position IT to meet their needs with the appropriate solution.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech's Use Experience Design to Drive Empathy with the Business blueprint.

Pinpoint specific mobile needs in your journey map

Realize that mobile applications may not precisely fit with your personas workflow or align to their expectations due to device and system limitations and restrictions. Flag the mobile opportunities that require significant modifications to underlying systems.

Consider these workflow scenarios that can influence your persona's desire for mobile:

Define the mobile experience your end users want

Anytime, Anywhere
The user can access, update and analyze data, and corporate products and services whenever they want, in all networks, and on any device.

Hands-Off & Automated
The application can perform various workflows and tasks without the user's involvement and notify the user when specific triggers are hit.

Personalized & Insightful
Content presentation and subject are tailored for the user based on specific inputs from the user, device hardware or predicted actions.

Integrated Ecosystem
The application supports a seamless experience across various 3rd party and enterprise applications and services the user needs.

Visually Pleasing & Fulfilling
The UI is intuitive and aesthetically gratifying with little security and performance trade-offs to use the full breadth of its functions and services.

Each mobile platform has its own take on the mobile native experience. The choice ultimately depends on whether the costs and effort are worth the anticipated value.

1.2.1 Discover your mobile needs

1-3 hours

1. Define the workflow of a high priority opportunity in your mobile backlog. This workflow can be pertaining to an existing mobile application or a workflow that can benefit with a mobile application.
   1. Indicate the trigger that will initiate the opportunity and the desired outcome.
   2. Break down the persona's desired outcome into small pieces of value that are realized in each workflow step.
2. Identify activities and touchpoints the persona will need to complete to finish each step in the workflow. Indicate the technology used to complete the activity or to facilitate the touchpoint.
3. Indicate which activities and touchpoints can be satisfied, complimented or enhanced with mobile.

1.2.1 cont'd

Legend:

Bold – Touchpoint

* – Activities or Touchpoints That Can Benefit with Mobile

1.2.1 cont'd

1-3 hours

1. Analyze persona expectations. Identify the persona's must-haves, then nice-to-haves, and then hidden needs to effectively complete the workflow.
   1. Must-haves. The necessary outcomes, qualities, and features of the workflow step.
   2. Nice-to-haves. Desired outcomes, qualities, or features that your persona is able to articulate or express.
   3. Hidden needs. Outcomes, qualities, or features that your persona is not aware they have a desire for; benefits that they are pleasantly surprised to receive. These will usually be unknown for your first-iteration journey map.
2. Indicate which persona expectations can be satisfied with mobile. Discuss what would the desired mobile experience be.
3. Discuss feedback and experiences your team has heard from the personas they engage with regularly.
4. Document your findings and discussions into Info-Tech's Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template.

Download the Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template

1.2.1 cont'd

Example

1.2.1 cont'd

Template:

If you need more than four steps in the workflow, duplicate this slide.

Understand how mobile fits with your current system

Evaluate the risks and impacts of your desired mobile features by looking at your enterprise system architecture from top to bottom. Is your mobile vision and needs compatible with your existing business capabilities and technologies?

An architecture is usually represented by one or more architecture views that together provide a coherent description of the application system, including demonstrating the full impact mobile will have. A single, comprehensive model is often too complex to be understood and communicated in its most detailed form, and a model too high level hides the underlying complexity of an application's structure and deployment (The Open Group, TOGAF 8.1.1 - Developing Architecture Views). Obtain a complete understanding of your architecture by assessing it through multiple levels of views to reveal different sets of concerns:

Application Architecture Views

1. Use Case View

• How does your business operate, and how will users interact with your mobile applications?

• What is the user workflow impacted by mobile, and how will it change?

• How are my existing applications structured? What are its various components? How will mobile expand the costs of the existing technical debt?

• What is the relationship of the data and information consumed, analyzed, and transmitted? Will mobile jeopardize the quality and reliability of the data?

• In what environment are your mobile application components deployed? How will the existing systems operate with your mobile applications?

See our Enhance Your Solution Architecture for more information.

Ask key questions in your current system assessment

• How do the various components of your system communicate with each other (e.g., web APIs, middleware, and point to point)?
• What information is exchanged during the conversation?
• How does the data flow from one component to the next? Is the data read-only or can application and users edit and modify it?
• What are the access points to your mid- and back-tier systems (e.g., user access through web interface, corporate networks and third-party application access through APIs)?
• Who has access to your enterprise systems?
• Which components are managed and operated by third-party providers? What is your level of control?
• What are the security protocols currently enforced in your system?
• How often are your databases updated? Is it real-time or periodic extract, transfer, and load (ETL)?
• What are the business rules?
• Is your mobile stack dependent on other systems?
• Is a mobile middleware, web server, or API gateway needed to help facilitate the integration between devices and your back-end support?

1.2.2 Conduct a technical assessment

1-3 hours

1. Evaluate your current systems that will support the journey map of your mobile opportunities based on two categories: system quality and system management. Use the tables on the following slides and modify the questions if needed.
2. Discuss if the current state of your system will impede your ability to succeed with mobile. Use this discussion to verify the decision to continue with mobile applications in your current state.
3. Document your findings and discussions into Info-Tech's Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template.

Download the Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template

1.2.2 cont'd

Current State System Quality Assessment

1.2.2 cont'd

Current State System Management Assessment

Step 1.3

Define Your Non-Functional Requirements

Activities

1.3.1 Define mobile application quality

1.3.2 Verify your decision to deliver mobile applications

Set the Mobile Context

This step involves the following participants:

• Applications Manager
• Product and Platform Owners
• Software Delivery Teams

Outcomes of this step

• Mobile application quality definition
• Readiness for mobile delivery

Build a strong foundation of mobile application quality

Functionality and aesthetics often take front seats in mobile application delivery. Applications are then frequently modified and changed, not because they are functionally deficient or visually displeasing, but because they are difficult to maintain or scale, too slow, vulnerable or compromised. Implementing clear quality principles (i.e., non-functional requirements) and strong quality assurance practices throughout delivery are critical to minimize the potential work of future maintenance and to avoid, mitigate and manage IT risks.

What is Mobile Application Quality?

• Quality requirements (i.e., non-functional requirements) are properties of a system or product that dictate how it should behave at runtime and how it should be designed, implemented, and maintained.
• These requirements should be involved in decision making around architecture, UI and functional design changes.
• Functionality should not dictate the level of security, availability, or performance of a product, thereby risking system quality. Functionality and quality are viewed orthogonally, and trade-offs are discussed when one impacts the other.
• Quality attributes should never be achieved in isolation as one attribute can have a negative or positive impact on another (e.g. security and availability).

Why is Mobile Quality Assurance Critical?

• Quality assurance (QA) is a necessity for the validation and verification of mobile delivery, whether you are delivering applications in an Agile or Waterfall fashion. Effective QA practices implemented across the software development lifecycle (SDLC) are vital, as all layers of the mobile stack need to readily able to adjust to suddenly evolving and changing business and user needs and technologies without risking system stability and breaking business standards and expectations.
• However, investments in QA optimizations are often afterthoughts. QA is commonly viewed as a lower priority compared to other delivery capabilities (e.g., design and coding) and is typically the first item cut when delivery is under pressure.

See our Build a Software Quality Assurance Program for more information.

Mobile emphasizes the importance of good security, performance and integration

Today's mobile workforce is looking for new ways to get more work done quickly. They want access to enterprise solutions and data directly on their mobile device, which can reside on multiple legacy systems and in the cloud and third-party infrastructure. This presents significant performance, integration, and security risks.

Mobile risks opening and widening existing security gaps

New mobile technologies and the continued expansion of the enterprise environment increase the number of entry points attackers to your corporate data and networks. The ever-growing volume, velocity, and variety of new threats puts significant pressure on mobile delivery teams who are responsible for implementing mobile security measures and maintaining alignment to your security policies and those of app stores.

Mobile attacks can come from various vectors:

Understand the top web security risks and vulnerabilities seen in the industry

Recognize mobile applications are exposed to the same risks and vulnerabilities as web applications. Learn of OWASP's top 10 web security risks.

• Broken Access Control
  • Failures typically lead to unauthorized information disclosure, modification, or destruction of all data or performing a business function outside the user's limits.
• Cryptographic Failures
  • Improper and incorrect protection of data in transit and at rest, especially proprietary and confidential data and those that fall under privacy laws.
• Injection
  • Execution of malicious code and injection of hostile or unfiltered data on the mobile device via the mobile application.
• Insecure Design
  • Missing or ineffective security controls in the application design. An insecure design cannot be fixed by a perfect implementation,. Needed security controls were never created to defend against specific attacks.
• Security Misconfiguration
  • The security settings in the application are not securely set or configured, including poor security hardening and inadequate system upgrading practices.
• Vulnerable and Outdated Components
  • System components are vulnerable because they are unsupported, out of date, untested or not hardened against current security concerns.
• Identification and Authentication Failures
  • Improper or poor protection against authentication-related attacks, particularly to the user's identity, authentication and session management.
• Software and Data Integrity Failures
  • Failures related to code and infrastructure that does not protect against integrity violations, such as an application relying upon plugins, libraries, or modules from untrusted sources, repositories, and content delivery networks
• Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
  • Insufficient logging, detection, monitoring, and active response that hinders the ability to detect, escalate, and respond to active breaches.
• Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
  • SSRF flaws occur whenever a web application is fetching a remote resource without validating the user-supplied URL.

Good mobile application performance drives satisfaction and value delivery

Underperforming mobile applications can cause your users to be unproductive. Your mobile applications should always aim to satisfy the productivity requirements of your end users.

Users quickly notice applications that are slow and difficult to use. Providing a seamless experience for the user is now heavily dependent on how well your application performs. Optimizing your mobile application's processing efficiency can help your users perform their jobs properly in various environment conditions.

Productive Users Need
Performant Mobile Applications

Enhance the performance of the entire mobile stack

Due to frequently changing mobile hardware, users' high performance expectations and mobile network constraints, mobile delivery teams must focus on the entire mobile stack for optimizing performance.

Fine tune your enterprise mobile applications using optimization techniques to improve performance across the full mobile stack.

Info-Tech Insight

Some user performance expectations can be managed with clever UI design (e.g., spinning pinwheels to indicate loading in progress and directing user focus to quick loading content) and operational choices (e.g. graceful degradation and progressive enhancements).

Create an API-centric integration strategy

Mobile delivery teams are tasked to keep up with the changing needs of end users and accommodate the evolution of trending mobile features. Ensuring scalable APIs is critical in quickly releasing changes and ensuring availability of corporate services and resources.

As your portfolio of mobile applications grows, and device platforms and browsers diversify, it will become increasingly complex to provide all the data and service capabilities your mobile apps need to operate. It is important that your APIs are available, reliable, reusable, and secure for multiple uses and platforms.

Take an API-centric approach to retain control of your mobile development and ensure reliability.

APIs are the underlying layer of your mobile applications, enabling remote access of company data and services to end users. Focusing design and development efforts on the maintainability, reliability and scalability of your APIs enables your delivery teams to:

• Reuse tried-and-tested APIs to deliver, test and harden applications and systems quicker by standardizing on the use and structure of REST APIs.
• Ensure a consistent experience and performance across different applications using the same API.
• Uniformly apply security and access control to remain compliant to security protocols, industry standards and regulations.
• Provide reliable integration points when leveraging third-party APIs and services.

See our Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process for more information.

Guide your integration strategy with principles

Craft your principles around good API management and integration practices

Expose Enterprise Data And Functionality in API-Friendly Formats
Convert complex on-premises application services into developer-friendly RESTful APIs

Protect Information Assets Exposed Via APIs to Prevent Misuse
Ensure that enterprise systems are protected against message-level attack and hijack

Authorize Secure, Seamless Access for Valid Identities
Deploy strong access control, identity federation and social login functionality

Optimize System Performance and Manage the API Lifecycle
Maintain the availability of backend systems for APIs, applications and end users

Engage, Onboard, Educate and Manage Developers
Give developers the resources they need to create applications that deliver real value

Source: 5 Pillars of API Management, Broadcom, 2021

Clarify your definition of mobile quality

Quality does not mean the same thing to everyone

Do not expect a universal definition of mobile quality. Each department, person and industry standard will have a different interpretation of quality, and they will perform certain activities and enforce policies that meet those interpretations. Misunderstanding of what is defined as a high quality mobile application within business and IT teams can lead to further confusion behind governance, testing priorities and compliance.

Each interpretation of quality can lead to endless testing, guardrails and constraints, or lack thereof. Be clear on the priority of each interpretation and the degree of effort needed to ensure they are met.

For example:

Mobile Application Owner
What does an accessible mobile application mean?

Persona: Customer
I can access it on mobile phones, tablets and the web browser

Persona: Developer
I have access to each layer of the mobile stack including the code & data

Persona: Operations
The mobile application is accessible 24/7 with 95% uptime

Example: A School Board's Quality Definition

1.3.1 Define mobile application quality

1-3 hours

1. List 5 quality attributes that your organization sees as important for a successful mobile application.
2. List the core personas that will support mobile delivery and that will consume the mobile application. Start with development, operations and support, and end user.
3. Describe each quality attributes from the perspective of each persona by asking, "What does quality mean to you?".
4. Review each description from each persona to come to an acceptable definition.
5. Document your findings and discussions into Info-Tech's Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template.

Download the Mobile Application Delivery Communication Template

1.3.1 cont'd

Example: Info-Tech Guided Implementation with a Legal and Professional Services Organization

1.3.2 Verify your decision to deliver mobile applications

1-3 hours

1. Review the various end user, business and technical expectations for mobile its achievability given the current state of your system and non-functional requirements.
2. Complete the list of questions on the following slide as an indication for your readiness for mobile delivery.

1.3.2 cont'd

Phase 2

Define Your Mobile Approach

Choose Your Mobile Platform and Tools

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Step 2.1 – Choose Your Platform Approach
• Step 2.2 – Shortlist Your Mobile Delivery Solution
• Step 2.3 – Create a Roadmap for Mobile Delivery

This phase involves the following participants:

• Applications Manager
• Product and Platform Owners
• Software Delivery Teams
• Business and IT Leaders

Step 2.1

Choose Your Platform Approach

Activities

2.1.1 Select your platform approach

Define Your Mobile Approach

This step involves the following participants:

• Applications Manager
• Product and Platform Owners
• Software Delivery Teams
• Business and IT Leaders

Outcomes of this step

• Desired mobile platform approach

Mobile value is dependent on the platform you choose

What is a platform?