Digital Transformation Starts with Strong Teamwork

There’s an idea in federal agencies that the way to get the most from a cloud transformation may spring from a vendor’s platform. But an overlooked component to success may be setting up a cross-functional team within your government IT organization.

A cross-functional team can consist of application and operations cloud engineers who work together as one team, make decisions, move faster than a hierarchical approach, and don’t rely on one central authority to provision projects or greenlight the next step.

In too many cases, agencies have set up their IT organizations with multiple teams, each a potential roadblock before the next approval. We’ve seen agencies with a server team, a database team, a server application team, a storage team and a developer team. Often, each of these groups is siloed. In extreme examples, we’ve even noted infrastructure teams that don't talk to each other.

In those agencies, if you need a server, you need to talk to someone. If you need a container cluster, you need to talk to someone else. And then, once they create it, they give you some rights to manage it.

It’s not a work pace conducive to transformation.

But by creating autonomous, cross-functional teams that collectively oversee cloud usage, the approach can increase the speed and efficiency of transformation.

Imagine the organization’s workflow like a highway: There are lanes and traffic signs, but the people driving can change lanes. They can choose their speed. And rather than putting obstacles in the way, the team is merely offering guardrails — which they enforce — to help the agency move at the appropriate speed. But outside of those guardrails, people can operate freely.

This way, when an IT staffer wants to launch a project, there’s a broad understanding of what’s needed.

Think of it as a kind of satellite governance. The effect is basically to blur the lines between developers and operations.

At one government agency where Enquizit recently worked, the members of one cross-functional team, called a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), now have more visibility into any potential issues. What are the errors? Where are the logs? Team members throughout the organization are talking to each other, and that in turn brings more efficiency. There are fewer surprises, which is critical in any sensitive situation where significant change is underway. Instead, IT staff face a more mature process to work through the lifecycle.

The CCoE had an advisory role to execute the agency’s cloud strategy in an early phase of the project, and later it also prescribed guidance on cloud standards and processes that are repeatable. Enquizit’s proposal for the CCoE’s next phase is that its role should change to provide functional support, and our goal in the final contract year is to provide more technical training on using automation and cloud best practices and embracing a DevSecOps mindset.

Moving a large organization from centralized IT to decentralized IT is a huge task, but bringing members of isolated teams into a functional CCoE to break silos and increase collaboration is the first step.

Cloud transformation can be difficult, but the most complicated parts of a cloud transformation project in the federal government space are not technology related. Often, it’s a matter of change management. It’s about evolving to a new way of thinking, and that can take time.

But it’s worth the investment. Consider the direction federal IT is headed: The White House has released new mandates on security, new directives on zero trust and new expectations for artificial intelligence. Not one of those goals is possible, or easy, without cloud transformation.

Agency executives may say, “We want to do AI!” But they’re not there yet. They need to crawl, walk, then run.

A cross-functional team to help ensure the organization is following the tenets of DevSecOps is a strong place to start.