Don't Make Your Pega Infinity '23 Marathon An Uphill Battle
In 2021, I decided to run my very first marathon. As I prepared for the marathon, someone gave me advice that the course was flat. So I trained expecting the course to be very straightforward. When I ran the race, indeed the course was flat...up until mile 22. At mile 22, the marathon course shifted to a two-mile uphill run. I later learned that this leg of the course was infamously nicknamed "Highway To Hill," a nod to the 1979 AC/DC album, Highway to Hell.
This experience during my first marathon reminds me of the journey that leaders face when implementing large-scale Pega transformations. After a year or two of struggling to implement Pega, most leaders come to realize that implementing Pega is not a simple sprint or 10K race. Pega is a full-on marathon, with a bunch of unexpected hills and hurdles thrown in. And now with the introduction of Pega Infinity '23, the marathon has been upgraded to an ultramarathon.
To cross the Pega Infinity '23 Marathon finish line you will need a game plan, proper training, and time to prepare. Over the last seven years, my team at Digital FastForward has worked with hundreds of leaders to help them prepare for and successfully run the Pega Marathon. Our marathon preparation program focuses on four fundamentals:
- Assess - This first step is all about evaluating your current level of performance with Pega. This is similar to completing a VO2 max assessment, benchmarking your team's pace, skills, and practices when it comes to Pega. This step also looks at how your team is approaching architecture and design, two major hurdles that slow down Pega implementations.
- Align - In truth, the Pega Marathon is a relay race, requiring multiple teams to hand the baton off to each other at different legs of the race. Unfortunately, most teams are not aligned on the strategy for getting value from Pega and struggle to pass the baton from team to team when implementing Pega. This misalignment - on strategy, execution, and practices - is the number one reason teams don't cross the finish line.
- Prioritize - Business and technology teams struggle to surface new Pega use cases and opportunities that drive the greatest impact, while not exploding license and implementation costs. In our framework, we help teams to prioritize opportunities based on three dimensions: desirability, viability, and feasibility. These three dimensions balance customer-driven requirements, business-value requirements, and technology-environment reality.
- Roadmap - The biggest lesson I learned from my first marathon: Don't rely on second-hand advice about the course terrain. Study the course and learn the course for yourself. Unfortunately, I see so many teams make the same mistake I made by relying on second-hand advice to define their roadmaps for Pega. Roadmaps are hard, roadmaps are messy, and roadmaps represent dozens of tradeoffs between different teams and stakeholders. As you prepare for your Pega Marathon, you will need to work collaboratively across teams to define a roadmap that gets everyone to the finish line.
The clock is ticking to finalize budgets and plans for running the Pega Infinity '23 Marathon. To help you better prepare for the race, we recently launched a series of bootcamps. Each bootcamp provides the tools, coaching, and guidance needed to excel at the four fundamentals of Pega performance: Assess, Align, Prioritize, and Roadmap.
This hands-on event, the Pega Value eXclerator Bootcamp, will be facilitated by our team of industry leading Pega experts - including Pega lead system architects, Pega lead business architects, low-code thought leaders, and data scientists. Register today to take advantage of this unique opportunity to work hand-in-hand with leading Pega experts on your plan for winning the Pega Infinity '23 Marathon.
