Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 02

36 / Canadian Government Executive // April/May 2019 other important projects, preventing IT from delivering value to other parts of the Ministry’s business and mandate. Many organizations do not have a good handle on their key problems or their causes before they define their require- ments. And this is as much a core-business issue as it is a CIO issue. What Challenges can Software Solve? Highly transactional business processes (mass-processing, or mass-customization) are defined by decision trees and business rules that can be coded into software to provide a high degree of automation. Pro- cessing mass transactions such as tax re- turns, pension benefits, and so on are often great candidates for serious automation. However, deep-thinking work (such as building or reviewing business cases, policies, strategies, correspondence, etc.) are much less able to benefit from digital solutions. In the deep-thinking business case review and approval process that the CIO at the top of this article was attempt- ing to automate, after a deeper review of the process by staff using Lean, they iden- tified nine “must-solve, cannot-fail” chal- lenges (see image). Once the CIO’s cross-functional team identified this short-list of challenges and assessed whether currently-avail- able technology could solve them, they realized that expecting digital solutions to solve all of their problems was a pipe- dream. Only about 20 per cent of the issues could be resolved by the software (at least until AI becomes a fully-accessible, broad- ly-implemented reality). By the way, the team estimated that each business case going through their system experienced at least 7.5 weeks of preventable effort – mul- tiplied by an annual volume of 300+ busi- ness cases. Not solving these issues carries a serious price tag indeed. And as helpful as Agile/Scrum is to deliv- er twice the software in half the time, with- out first understanding deeply the business problems and their causes, this worthy discipline is often limited to “building the wrong thing faster, with less effort.” Every hour you spend better under- standing the process you are attempting to digitize could save you ten or more hours of effort later, while also freeing up IT and core business staff to deliver more value in your part of the business and elsewhere. If you are a CIO, this approach can help you satisfy more clients and get rid of your own backlog. If you are a client of IT, un- derstanding better your own business is- sues and their causes can get you your sys- tem more quickly, with greater likelihood that it will actually work once delivered. As another CIO said when looking at the list of his client’s root causes: “This is no longer a $300,000 project that has to go through our approval process and takes two years to implement. This is more like four days of a business analyst and a coder to improve your existing system.” Craig will present this topic at the annual CGE Leadership Summit coming this fall. In addition, the CGE Learning Institute is spon- soring a two-day workshop on how to imple- ment the concepts identified in this article in Ottawa and in Toronto. Craig Szelestowski is the President and Founder of Lean Agility Inc. In his time as a Vice President at the Royal Cana- dian Mint, and later as an independent Lean Government facilitator, trainer and coach, he initiated and has led some of Canada’s most notable public sector Lean transformations. TRANSFORMATION Figure 2 Every hour you spend better understanding the process you are attempting to digitize could save you ten or more hours of effort later, while also freeing up IT and core business staff to deliver more value in your part of the business and elsewhere.