The Digital Transformation Roadmap: Rebuild Your Organization for Continuous Change Hardcover – September 5, 2023

Full disclosure, David and I have worked together before so I was deeply familiar with his previous book: The Digital-Transformation Playbook. Back in 2017 one of the challenges our clients faced was how to think about platform-based business models as examples like Airbnb and Uber were presenting fundamental new ways to deliver value over costs that we really had not encountered at scale before. In 2023, a new set of challenges are unfolding including how to harness generative AI and machine learning - and how these technologies will represent a new level of decision-making for managers to compete. For my money, this book delivers on its promise to act as a roadmap on that journey. Here is one of my favorites passages from page 115: "For digital transformation to succeed, you first must define where it will compete and seek to create value. Without priorities, any DX will become a series of scattered projects that are disconnected from the needs of the business and easily hijacked by the hype of new technologies." We see this issue every day in our client work and I frequently recommend David's book to management teams that want to ensure they get digital transformation right the first time (rather than eventually) as the stakes today have never been higher.

David Rogers' "The Digital Transformation Road Map" is a must-read for anyone in the tech industry looking to align technology initiatives with business needs. Rogers effectively illustrates the perils of a myopic focus on IT or business objectives and provides a refreshing framework based on Problems and Opportunities to guide digital transformation efforts. His insights on "Road Mapping" offer a structured path to solutions, making this book an invaluable resource for professionals seeking success in the ever-evolving intersection of technology and business. Highly recommended for both seasoned experts and newcomers to the field.

The book is a practical and efficient guide for CEOs, Leaders, Consultants interested in following the path of digital transformation and being able to leverage the competitive advantage of any business, improving the consumer experience while allowing for rationalizing operational costs.

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Professor David Rogers’ new book, The Digital Transformation Roadmap: Rebuild your organization for continuous change, is worthy of your time. I participated in his 2018 digital transformation (DX) cohort offered through Columbia Business School. It was based in part on his 2016 book–The Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink your business for the digital age. The Digital Transformation Roadmap expands on the subject through additional case studies and experiences from numerous DX cohorts and projects in the US and abroad.This is a practical DX book that can help executives prepare for the transformation journey. To his credit, Rogers does not sugar coat the process and points out that digital transformation is hard, takes time, and should be approached as a continuing process. He explains why a majority of DX projects fail to fulfill their objectives, often because transformation is equated with deploying new technologies and upgrading IT infrastructures. DX requires new thinking, strategies, and cultures that embrace continuous transformation in response to recurring waves of technological innovations.The book includes a quote from a 2014 New York Times Innovation Report that every executive promoting digital transformation should post and highlight at every meeting. The NYT had struggled transforming despite investing time and capital to rescue its struggling business. The study found that the effort had been hamstrung by the organization’s “constant focus on the company’s legacy business [which] became “a form of laziness because it is work that is comfortable and familiar to us, that we know how to do. And it allows us to avoid the truly hard work and bigger questions about our present and our future: What shall we become. How must we change?”” The same issues and questions apply to countless businesses across industries that struggle to digitally transform and is particularly salient in the healthcare industry.I’ve lead and been part of many projects involved in transforming organizations for the digital age. In my view, The Digital Transformation Roadmap does an outstanding job of covering the challenges, benefits, and roads to transformation. Rogers’ insights, cases, methods, and tools, which he includes with his book, are invaluable for those taking on the challenges of digitally transforming their enterprise. I will be integrating it into our frameworks and services particularly those focusing on the healthcare sector. The Digital Transformation Roadmap gets five stars!

The book is fine. One thing, it's a nit but relevant as you consider - in the opening the author explicitly claims to have single-handedly created the "digital transformation" category with his prior 2016 work... At least one book beat him by 16 years. "Digital Transformation", by Patel and McCarthy in 2000, from McGraw Hill. In 2000. Forward by the former CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, no less.

David’s, contribution to Digital Transformation has been pivotal to creating a common ground and making it clear that it must be directed by and aligned with the business strategy.

So, why discuss product management practices in a digital transformation book I don’t understand. Digital transformation in industry deals with reducing TCO and dealing with technical debt. We call them the janitors of the IT world. DX is all about the core. It has nothing to do with UX or business strategy. There are operational product managers that are tasks to optimize the UX. So, no DX is not about business strategy it’s all about tech strategy. Unfortunately this book doesn’t cover these area much at all. Whole book as it apples to DX can be summarized in 10 pages.