With customer and market demands driving rapid changes to business models and practices, the traditional lines between business and information technology roles are becoming blurred.

Organisations that embrace this merging of previously disparate responsibilities are best positioned to adapt to market changes and demands, ThoughtWorks principle Barry O’Reilly tells Engineering News.

“Despite technology now being seen as a strategic capability for any organisation, many enterprises fail to reap the rewards of their investment because their culture, processes and mindset do not support experimentation and learning,” he says.

O’Reilly, who co-authored Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organisations Innovate at Scale, notes that, to survive, organisations need to innovate scale.

“Technology is now core to business and transformation in organisational structure and governance, financial management and product development; culture must accompany technical excellence to improve innovation and ensure ongoing business relevance.”

He adds that successful enterprises have reconsidered all aspects – from governance and financial management to systems architecture and organisational culture in the pursuit of radically improved performance.

Adopting a lean enterprise management system takes time and commitment, but is vital for harnessing the cultural and technical forces that are accelerating the rate of innovation, O’Reilly points out.

“Businesses should approach problem-solving experimentally by exploring solutions, testing assumptions and getting feedback from real users.”

While working with various companies to develop the lean enterprise business strategy, he discovered that the rate of technology disruption and changes in customer needs are having a profound impact on business.

“We considered techniques and skills that would make these businesses successful. A lot of the thinking regarding lean enterprise is driven through different sources, such as manufacturing and software,” he states.

O’Reilly adds that it is important to understand what creates high performance, and explains that the correlation between high- and low-performance organisations has to do with technology, which offers companies the chance to radically improve.

“There are start-up companies, comprising five to ten people, that find a business model that works and they scale it exponentially to reach many people.”