FEEL LIKE YOUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WAS A BIT ...MEH?
- Matthew Verity
- Aug 27, 2025
- 4 min read
Digital Transformation initiatives over the past decade have delivered a significant uplift in the capabilities of technologies at the core of every organisation. Whilst these delivery programs have been successful in deploying advanced foundational capabilities, many business leaders are left asking: has all this investment truly transformed the business in any meaningful way?
In case you’re feeling alone - you’re not, McKinsey has noted that 70% of Transformation projects have failed* to deliver meaningful and therefore successful outcomes. Depending on your frame of mind, this statement may be validating or depressing; however, rather than lamenting the past, the time has come to shift focus from foundational tech upgrade and start to capitalise on the investment through adopting a refreshed, contemporary way to deliver in A Better Way.
From Digital “Done” to Digital Value: Why Delivery 2.0 Is the Missing Link.
Whether triggered by the promises of Cloud, Business Intelligence, AI, or by the necessity that COVID created in enabling WFH, investments in what has been termed Digital Transformation have been significant (approaching $2.4 trillion by 2026) and (seemingly) ongoing for the large part of a decade. From a pure technology change perspective, it’s safe to argue that the investments have yielded some pretty significant changes in a short period ... set your mind back a few short years to when online meetings were something only nerds did. In a similar vein, we now live our lives off laptops that allow us to work from wherever, thanks to SaaS platforms that can be spun up (and down), and customised to meet our needs flexibly and as required.
Even if one considers the commitment to technology as the "change enabler," many still argue that IT is slow to respond, that implemented technology is not delivering what people want, and that users remain keen to innovate but lack the access they require to do so.
The Problem: Transformation Without Traction. Despite trillions invested globally, many organisations still face:
Slow IT response times
Tools that don’t meet user needs
Persistent shadow IT
Innovation bottlenecks
In short, the transformation may be “done,” but the business impact remains elusive. If your program delivered a software upgrade rather than a true transformation, it’s time to rethink the delivery model. So then why are many businesses now claiming that their Digital Transformation Programs are “done”, investment over.
And if we’re questioning the benefits, have we ‘missed the boat’ and simply delivered a glorified software upgrade rather than a (true) transformation of uplifted capability and improved experiences for the stakeholder value chain?
Business needs to take an honest appraisal as to whether their investments have or will:
Deliver digital tools that support business changes faster through self-service;
Establish better ways to collaborate between business and technology resources to support business changes that arise;
Reducing the amount of shadow IT
Technology alone isn’t the answer. Real transformation happens when business and tech collaborate continuously—not just during rollout phases.
You might immediately categorise these as “tech” problems to solve, but this is where we now need to update our thinking.
Tech works best when built as a collaboration across the organisation. Full Stop.
In a world where our children are teaching us how to use technology in ways that even the suppliers didn’t consider, we need to blend the skills of the highly technical with those on the front line. Rather than temporarily bringing our tech resources and business stakeholders together to solve a problem, the focus needs to be on blending the skills across the organisation into squads —squads with the specific remit and skills to continuously improve business capability.
This recognises that transformation is not a one-off, but rather an ongoing motion, exactly supporting the fact that business itself is not static.
In 2024, we introduced Delivery 2.0—an operating model designed for today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. Rooted in agile principles, Delivery 2.0 enables continuous collaboration, rapid iteration, and measurable business outcomes. This is a model that is supported through the adoption of an Agile mindset to support effective continuous collaboration, which is simply fundamental for ongoing success.
It’s not about starting over. It’s about realigning your delivery approach to match the sophistication of your tech stack—and finally realising the ROI you’ve been chasing.
Rather than writing off your Digital Transformation as “done and dusted”, now is the time to get inspired by a solution to achieving a return and leveraging that investment. It may just be a realignment to an approach as modern as your shiny tech.
Author. Matthew Verity brings 25+ years of delivery experience to quenable as a part of his vision to have the business transition to ways of working that take advantage of technical innovation
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*McKinsey Transformation, “Why do most transformations fail? A conversation with Harry Robinson”, 2019
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