Tech Vision, Strategy & Operating Models


This page contains an overview of the services and resources I provide on the topic of Tech Vision, Strategy & Operating Models. For an overview of all other consulting services I provide check the main consulting page

What is it?

As modern organizations start realizing that Tech is a core asset to enable building great (tech-enabled) products and not just a cost center, we also realize that such tech-enabled organizations need to evolve their operating models. This means, making sure there is a clear tech vision and strategies in the organization and its products (which should align and support the company and products vision). But also means that the tech disciplines (e.g.: engineering, data science, etc.) are truly empowered and integrated into the teams. For that to work, and given the nature of continuous change, we need to have more adaptive operating models, where we can notice and react to challenges continuously. In a nutshell, we want to enable "Learning Organizations", which foster maximizing information flow and the ability to quickly react to changes in their environment. For more details on this, check my research on this topic.


Service I provide

I can help with different topics:

  • Tech vision & strategies for continuous evolution - creating tech vision and strategies that are continuously up-to-date and promote clear purpose, vision, and alignment in the organization. Make sure they consider all key perspectives required to achieve a sustainable evolution of the organization, its products and teams.

  • Operating models, structures, and dynamics for continuous evolution - help develop elements on organization operating models that allow to "engrain" the thinking of continuous and sustainable evolution of the organization's sociotechnical system (so that it can best deal with its environment demands and challenges).

  • Developing "Learning Organizations" - help the organization to develop elements that enable maximizing information flow, so that it can more rapidly learn and react to the different challenges that emerge.

I can help you with (among other things):

  • Inspiring talks and discussions with you and your teams to help kickstart things;
  • Deep-dive workshops to understand and assess the current situation, and define strategies to move forward;
  • Longer-term consulting and coaching to help you and your teams to adopt and engrain these thinking models and a more sustainable evolution in your tech-enabled organization.
  • ⭐️ check products page for more details on offerings.

The best way forward will depend on your organization and what makes sense given its situation. Feel free to contact me so we can explore that.


Reference Resources

In the following, you can find some reference materials I have created on this topic.


Experience

Some relevant experiences in this area:

  • Have done this sort of activity for the last 5 years at bol.com as Lead Engineer and Principal Tech Lead (often driving key initiatives - creator of bol.com Tech Vision “framework and operating model”; transformation of Data Science from a central Department (with "data science teams") into a Discipline that Product Teams have on their multi-disciplinary teams, just like other disciplines required to build successful products).
  • bol.com introduction of Tech Leads Network: Led the introduction of the Product Tech Lead function in the organization (a function that leads technical vision and health across the different teams in a product). This is a key role to enable scaling a sustainable evolution of products, namely: catering to the "technical" perspective of the product, and being able to discuss and align it with the "product" and "team" perspectives, as they continuous influence each other, and as such it is key to have a clear continuous understanding and alignment.
  • bol.com product-led organization evolution: Played a key role in shaping the sociotechnical evolution (teams and product boundaries) of bol.com from "empowered" teams owning microservices, into a model where there are clearer "product" scopes, formed by multiple microservices and teams. Goal: enable scaling of the organization and ability to support its customers, by having clearer and more aligned scopes ("products"), which tend to be owned by multiple teams working on related value streams to customers. This also led to the creation of several organizational transformations, such as stronger Platform Teams and different Enabling Teams (focused on enabling product teams).
  • bol.com scaling data science (from department to discipline): Tech Lead working with a group of people that lead the introduction of Data Science as a "discipline" that different products can use (on their cross-functional teams). This was a sociotechnical evolution, from a classic "central Data Science" department, which would not scale and align with the organization's operating model and ambitions (of empowered teams, owning clear streams of value to customers). You can find more about this evolution in this talk.

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