#2 - Transformational Leadership with Frank Lacalamita

In this episode of Pragmatic Lead, we're talking to Frank Lacalamita about digital transformations. Change management is hard, especially when stakes are high. Innovation requires changes. There is a lot that goes into planning and organizing big migrations, like hiring and training people, getting buy-in from the leadership, managing stakeholders' expectations, and more. We talk about our experiences as well as challenges.

You can find the full transcript on PragmaticLead.com

About the guest

Frank Lacalamita is a software architect and a technical leader in Toronto CA. He has been working on technical transformations in multiple industries over the past decade.

Notes

There are multiple management frameworks we can use to manage transformations in companies. We mentioned the ITIL Framework, PMO, and Agile.

Any change starts with assessing the current state and target state. And then when going through an evaluation, you end up with the roadmap on how to get from point A to point B (target state).

Change is necessary to drive innovation. Successful businesses embrace change. In our industry, there is always something new, a better, more efficient way to do solve problems. You have to adapt.

Especially with the explosion in open source projects. You can do so much more than proprietary software in early 2000-2010.

But it's not always easy to convince the leadership that there is value in doing the transformation. Even though there are obvious wins, if you can improve time to market, developers' productivity, automate certain tasks and save money on hardware. Some companies that missed the opportunity paid the price by falling behind in the industry. Some of the most common transformation these days is probably cloud migrations. And there is some push back, questioning the value of this massive undertaking.

There are a lot of changes happening during the transformation, it's not only affecting business and technology, but also people and their jobs. Sysadmins become SREs, network engineers transition to cloud architects, and so on.

Any transformational program has three pillars:

• People
• Process
• Technology

Think where the business wants to go, how to adapt the process and technology to accomplish that. Evaluate individuals, their skills, and responsibilities. Process and people are more difficult than technology. You have to invest in their careers, education, training.