Why are our internal Cloud & Engineering Platforms not delivering the amplifying and self-sustained business benefits we invested in? That’s a question more and more organizations are asking themselves as they struggle with low adoption rates. Dedicated teams focused on adoption and value realization might be the answer.
Deloitte’s 2024 Cloud Survey highlights a notable gap between leaders' expectations and the value realized from cloud investments. While most executives recognize the potential of cloud to drive agility, innovation, and cost efficiencies, many organizations still struggle to achieve full value from their cloud investments.
Some of these investments in cloud capabilities are engineering platforms (e.g., cloud infrastructure and internal development platforms). Businesses are looking to profit from a more agile operating model with incremental benefits building on each other over time – a strategy known as the Flywheel Effect. The Flywheel Effect is a concept that describes how small, consistent efforts can build momentum, eventually generating powerful, self-sustaining results. It originated from the idea of a mechanical flywheel, which stores rotational energy once set in motion and maintains momentum with little additional energy.
A lot of Cloud & Engineering Platforms are built with all the right technology and might have all the right features from a technology perspective. The only problem is that users often are not properly onboarded, and adoption efforts are given lower priority. The Flywheel Effect doesn’t kick in, and thus, product owners do not realize the expected ROI.
Underinvestment in adoption
The good news is that organizations can do a lot to give their internal platforms better odds of succeeding. Software engineering platforms might be a relatively new phenomenon, but diagnosing why the platforms are not performing as anticipated is an oldie.
Organizations still seem to underestimate the importance of working with the human aspects of technology. In the early stages, building a platform is primarily a technical endeavor with many fascinating processes for engineers – IT strategic choices to be made, tech stacks to be defined, tooling to be determined, etc. It is not until the final stages that users, like product teams and developers, are involved, which can turn the project into a lopsided affair if you don’t prioritize upskilling, platform feedback, and other adoption efforts.
Cloud Technology Hubs
As mentioned, this is not new to anybody who works with the value realization of technology. So, what can we do to change the Cloud & Engineering Platforms narrative?
At Deloitte, we have been involved in several successful projects where organizations have restructured the organization to better respond to users’ needs when a new Cloud & Engineering Platform is being implemented. Deloitte’s Platform Capability Model is a framework for leveraging software engineering capabilities and, not least, handling the adoption of new tools and workflows.
The key to value realization is a new core capability that works as a mediation body between product teams and the various technical teams that handle everything from security, risk, and compliance to platform strategy, development, and infrastructure. We call this mediation body a Cloud Technology Hub because it operates as the centerpiece of the ecosystem. You can think of a Cloud Technology Hub as an internal consultancy agency with subject matter experts dedicated to driving the realization of business benefits. The consultants can proactively handle onboarding users to the platforms and act as sparring partners to ensure that users experience the benefits of a new Cloud & Engineering Platform. In addition, they can handle requests, gather feedback from teams, and produce a roadmap with new features added to the platform.
Cloud Technology Hubs are the antithesis of handling Cloud & Engineering Platform adoption and process harmonization and standardization by relying on ad hoc efforts from individual users in the organization. Technology Hubs offer a structured path to production and deliver structured results in terms of improving tangible KPIs, like time-to-market/provision, increased adoption of standardized onboarding, and automation. That predictability speaks to product owners and the decision-makers sponsoring the new platforms.
Upskill and relocate internal resources
I can imagine what readers might think about building new internal capabilities and teams. Doesn’t that mean added costs? No. We are not suggesting that you hire net new people to build a Cloud Technology Hub; we are suggesting that you dedicate some of the resources you already have in your cloud and engineering teams to exclusively handle the successful adoption and enhancement of your Cloud & Engineering Platform. Most of these people do it already, but only as a sideline job. They need a full-time job specification as Cloud & Engineering Platform mediators.
The important message here is that the adoption of Cloud and Engineering Platforms is a job to be done. As a company, you don’t have time to fail when you build and invest in internal cloud and engineering capabilities. The competition is too fierce, and the market is moving too rapidly to not realize the benefits of your investment.
Do not fall into the trap of not dedicating people to drive consistent adoption efforts and realize the Flywheel Effects of your platform investments.
