IT Department vs Digital Factory: Beyond Stereotypes, A Winning Alliance
After 20 years leading tech teams, I've often heard these two worlds being portrayed as opposites. This binary vision doesn't reflect the reality of successful digital transformation.
Originally posted on Wed, 20 Nov 2024
📊 IT Department: Guardian of Our Technological Heritage
The IT Department masters the art of evolving existing systems without breaking them. Their teams are architects of controlled change, juggling legacy constraints and security requirements. What drives them? Building sustainable solutions. When an IT Product Manager analyzes a need, they think integration, standards, and longevity. This rigor allows our organizations to remain stable despite their complexity.
🚀 Digital Factory: Laboratory of Impact
The Digital Factory cultivates the art of the possible. Their teams are obsessed with user experience and speed of execution. Here, a Product Manager thinks user impact and rapid iterations. This "test & learn" culture enables exploring new territories and bringing fresh perspectives. Failure is seen as a learning step, not a risk.
📊 An important note: innovation isn't exclusive to Digital Factories. IT departments innovate differently. They push the boundaries of their technological foundations, modernize architectures, adopt cloud native... These innovations, less visible to end users, are crucial for tomorrow's Information Systems.
🎯 Magic Happens When These Worlds Collaborate
The greatest successes occur when these cultures understand and enrich each other. IT brings expertise and long-term vision, Digital Factory brings agility and user proximity.
💡 The Key to Success? It lies in our ability to build bridges. This requires humility from both sides. Digital transformation isn't a solo sprint, but a team long-distance race.
Next time someone talks about "silos," remember: these are two sides of the same coin, two energies that, when well orchestrated, enable our organizations to reinvent themselves. And at Bpifrance, this coin has a name: Bpifrance.io.
What's your take? What's your experience?
#DigitalTransformation #Innovation #Leadership #ProductManagement #TechLeadership