Continuous Improvement as a Business Transformation

One of the key benefits of an agile methodology like Scrum - & something that is very hard for a non-developer to get their head around - is that the methodology encourages & assumes some form of continuous improvement. There is regular reflection on the process as implemented, & how it can be made to work better.

Something that is much better understood at a corporate level than it is within an IT team is a business transformation process (or project), which sets the goal of achieving particular outcomes in some parts of the business as a result of a specific set of changes.

These are, more or less, equivalent.
Having said that, they are never seen as such for one very simple reason - one is iterative (usually based on a sprint of, say, two weeks), while the other is waterfall (lots of design up front, big delivery at the end of the project).

It is generally as a result of this divide that there are perceived differences like:

• continuous improvement rarely plans ahead, setting goals against which they measure their progress in improving
• business transformations produce isolated results in unrelated projects
• continuous improvement produces a trend of live status which is often out of date as soon as you print it
• business transformation has success criteria defined that ensure that a project ends & its approved budget can be classified into accounting periods & closed off

There needs to be a strategic transformation to allow for an IT unit's operational cost of continuous improvement to be seen as a varying maintenance cost (or an investment) - with a return on that investment. I am not talking about big companies here - any business whose core operations are around an IT unit & its output (product development, consulting, IT services) can benefit from an agile methodology that adds value to the business.
However, it will only add value if you can measure the outcomes. Anything that adds value can generally add the right kind of value (efficiency, cost reduction) if you set the right goals & measure the effectiveness of investment.

Too often, an IT unit "goes it alone" to improve itself because there is no executive buy-in for a business transformation process that is not a project that appears in an annual budget. Too often, executives see the internal workings of an IT unit as too arcane both for them & their board.

However, when the way that IT units work becomes the focus of a business strategy - with measurable outcomes - the business can only get better at measuring its own likelihood of success.