Who is Accountable for Digital Transformation

People are the CORE of Digital Transformation. 

Digital transformation is neither an IT project nor an operational change; it’s a strategic initiative and business leapfrogging. Digital transformation is also a journey which takes many building blocks, from mindset, strategy, to culture and capability etc, still, people are the CORE, it’s the transformation of people by people, but more specifically, who is accountable for digital transformation?

Ask ‘CORE’ questions in terms of accountability: When talking about a digital transformation, it can impact the core, enabling and supporting capabilities of an Enterprise. You need to understand that If talking about business at core enabling and supporting level, in that case, accountability comes from Managers at Core,

-Who is accountable for a vision for the change?

-Who is initiating the change?

-Who is providing change adoption strategy?

-Who leads the execution of change? 

-Who is accountable for achieving the milestones?
-Who is accountable for the quality and the cost of transformation?
-Who is accountable for change in capabilities at the core, enabling and supporting levels of business for a given transformation?

There's a group of professionals who are responsible and accountable for HOW the transformation is executed: A transformation may comprise of Projects and Programs and these can be assigned to Project Managers, Program Managers, Business Unit Managers, Account Managers, Technology Architects, Solution Architects, Solution Designers, and Information Architects to decide on road-map, capabilities to be transformed and associated phases of a given transformation. To be effective, from a systems perspective (wholeness of change), an enterprise PMO/VMO combination plays a role in assisting HOW this transformation is executed in a consistent, repeatable and measured manner. Improvement of the HOW is an interesting question. If talking about accountability then Program Managers along with Account Managers and Business Unit Managers are accountable for a Transformation while Project Managers, Technology Architects, Solution Architects, Solution Designers, and Information Architects are responsible for different phases of a transformation

The CIO and IT should play a critical role in digital transformation. As more often than not, technology is the major digital disruptor today, the purpose of digital transformation is to embed digital technology into key business processes, to improve business capability and competency to compete for the future. All forward-looking enterprises claim they are an information business, thus, enterprises across sectors work on enhancements and modernizing their platforms, most changes for these enterprises are around: Integration, Business Intelligence, CRM, etc, in order to optimize customer experience and improve business effectiveness & efficiency, and IT is business, every IT project is a business project.

Organizations are different - they have different cultures - they have different structures - they compete in different markets - they have a different scale. Usually, the vision would be set by the top management team - and that vision can lead to transformations in different business units for which the heads of the business units will be accountable (and perhaps also responsible - depending on the culture and structure of the organization). EA plays a key role here in guiding with the elaboration of the transformation, the strategy needs to be translated into more specific business goals, and every employee should understand his/her role and responsibility in such transformation. So people are CORE and key success factor in digital transformation.