A free framework for digitalization

Digital Readiness Framework is a practical business architecture framework for enhanced strategic alignment, agility and motivation in the digital era. There are 31 different building blocks and 14 practices presented. Their interconnection and interdependence, how they fit together as an integrative and holistic system is what makes the concept of digital readiness unique.

Integrative & Holistic Approach

This framework is integrative and holistic. It is integrative because it combines many disciplines and theories in one comprehensible and practical unit, ready to be applied in practice in a relatively short time. It is holistic, because it entwines the entire organization, not just parts of it. This framework is made to drive fundamental change in organizations.

Integrative (adjective)
: combining two or more things to form an effective unit system.
Holistic (adjective)
: dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part.

A roadmap to digital-agile success through deep understanding

This framework focuses on the mindset and the preparation of leaders. Most transformation programs focus on the mechanics of the digital-agile transformation. Mechanics is easier to sell, but we believe it is the thinking and deep understanding behind the mechanics that really matter. Understanding leads to readiness.

The new discipline of Business Architecture
Business Architecture is a discipline that represents a holistic, multidimensional business views of capabilities, end‐to‐end value delivery, information, and organizational structure, and the relationships among these business views and strategies, products, policies, initiatives, and stakeholders.
Only change is constant
Digitalization, and new technology in itself is a challenge. Global markets are changing, disruptive business models emerge. The talent market is changing as new generations grow up. Demand from customers and shareholders increases. We live in a VUCA world, characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
Solutions to internal challenges are obsolete
Most of the management know-how still taught today has been inherited from the pinnacle of the industrial age. The zeitgeist of the digital era is pretty different.The speed of change and the complexity of technology has rendered the thinking and practices of the industrial era obsolete. It is hard to face this fact, but it has happened regardless.
Impediments to transformation
When an organization decides to embark on a journey of transformation, leaders and transformation experts observe two opposing forces. One is the force of transformation originating in strategy, driven by the leadership of the organization. The other is an impeding force driven by the issues and challenges of the organization. If the impeding force is larger, transformation does not take place.
Focus shift towards human motivation
In the center of digital organizations is human talent. To meet the challenges of the digital era, organizations and their leaders must be able to better utilize human talent. This requires a human centric mindset and a better framework for organizing work and keeping people motivated. The entire framework is built around the theory of human motivation and agility. Only fast moving organizations are able to adapt to changes quickly enough to stay in the race.
Treating the entire organization
Although most of the building blocks may be applied independently, to achieve true digital readiness, they shall be applied as a whole. This framework relies on numerous other frameworks, principles, tools and theories, the detailed explanation of which is beyond the purpose of this document. To the contrary, the aim of this document is to show how these elements work together when integrated.
A roadmap to digital success
This roadmap shows the logical order in which building blocks of the Digital Readiness Framework shall be applied to an organization. Follow these steps and your chances of success in the digital-agile world certainly increase. Each step brings motivation, agility and effiency to your organizations as a new framework is built for work. The new framework brings mindset change with it, leading to real digital-agile readiness.

Avoid jumping on the agile bandwagon

We advise to avoid copying successful digital companies. Lots of lessons can be learned from inspecting other success tories, but blindly following trends may be dangerous. Our framework promotes tailor made agility, where each value stream is examined and an appropriate lean-agile framework is selected.

Spotipasting (verb)
: to copy the Spotify agile model blindly and cause chaos in one's agile transformation
Scrumriwhere (adverb)
: applying the Scrum framework in or to all places, teams and processes

Agile execution with OKR based strategic alignment

Agile Execution builds on the foundation of human talent and motivation: fostering self-management with coaching oriented servant leadership and inspection and adaptation in different, gradually decreasing time-boxes. Objectives and Key Resultr or OKRs provide strategic alignement to employees of all levels.

Mythbusting & critical thinking

Our framework points out toxic beliefs, traditions, assumptions, myths and destructive pop-wisdom that a digitally ready organization must reject. We also list scientific findings, concepts, principles, laws, skills & practices that are useful and shall be promoted and widely applied. Where applicable, we put the reject-promote pairs together to show contrast.

Proven to work

Our framework and supporting readiness products have been tested in companies large and small. Many people work better every day as a result of our work.

25 000 employees aligned
Our OKR based strategic alignment framework provides agility and effiency to thousands of employees in companies large and small.
€4 billion revenue
Over four billion euros revenue has been creatied by companies using our framework, delivered by professionals we trained.
2000 professionals ready
Our readiness courses have prepared many for business agility and specific agile roles across dozens of industries.
€100 million valuation
Our founders have a track record of building businesses of high valuation in the fintech sector, as startuppers and intrapreneurs.

Supporting free culture and happiness at work

Digital Readiness Framework is available for download with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence, that allows you to share the material in any medium or format and to build upon the material for any purpose, as long as you give appropriate credit and distribute your contributions under the same license.

Thomas Biro
Thomas Biro
Author
co-founder
We spend most of our adult lives in work. It is paramount that we spend this time happily. My personal passion is to help people tn find a meaning in their work in this new digital world. That’s why I brought the Digital Readiness Framework to life and shared it with the world with a Free Culture license.
Thomas Biro
Thomas Biro
Author
co-founder

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