Digital Transformation Teams: 7 Roles Besides Software Developers

While digital transformation is a huge undertaking, it pays off in the long run. Along for the journey, you will need a skilled digital transformation team. Its members will define your digital organization structure and processes and will facilitate the beneficial changes within your organization. 

To enable the transformation, your team needs to be staffed with the right set of skills and personalities. In this article, we will discuss a digital team structure and team roles you need to fulfill beyond purely technical ones.

First things first, we should understand what digital transformation team means. 

What is a digital transformation team?

It’s a team that spearheads a company’s adoption of innovative technologies. A dream team for digital transformation is a blend of hard skills and soft skills that align together to reap the benefits of tech advancements. CIOs emphasize that effective digital transformation teams boast low attrition, work closely with users and encompass a wide range of competencies. The team may consist of the following members. 

Head of digital transformation 

A person in this role will steer digital initiatives within your organization. He or she defines the benefits of digital transformation to your business. The ability to look at business goals rather than focusing on IT and technology is key for this role as well as the ability to find ways of monetization and reimagine business models. 

The head of digital transformation knows first-hand how the strategy should be managed, has very good soft skills and accountability. This role encompasses technology and business skills alike to achieve business goals by building stable tech solutions. 

Change leader

These folks are true influencers. They vote for change wholeheartedly and use their position to obtain resources and commitment for it. 

The change leader role is about building consensus regarding the strategy at all levels of an organization. Someone in this role needs to call upon their communication skills in order to instill enthusiasm and the feel-good about the change. 

A change leader in digital transformation is capable of marketing digital opportunities to the stakeholders and the rest of the company. They enable the change to trickle down throughout an entire organization. 

The nature of this role mandates that a change leader needs to have proven experience in communication and organizational changes. The “Agile” mindset required for this role helps them deeply understand the need for change and adapt to it fast while helping others to do the same. 

Solution Architect

This is a technology leader that designs the IT architecture of a software system. They are aware of industry-relevant integration patterns, microservices, and DevOps practices. Tech leaders not only have profound knowledge of modern tech stacks but they also keep their finger on the pulse of emerging technologies. 

Agility is a key characteristic of a top-performing technology leader. Modern architects abide by Scrum and Kanban frameworks to speed up the development process. With a mindset of a project manager, they plan the systems in a way that they bring fast results of the project, produce reliable data while ensuring compliance with security standards. 

Data architect 

Digital transformation requires making decisions based on admissible data, which allows for smart time and resources investment. Making data-driven decisions is a guarantee that an organization is on the right path towards improving its competitive advantage.

Data leaders map out use cases for data collection and explain how analytics can be used throughout an organization. They can connect data applications to business results. 

Critic

Critics handle the question such as “Is the project headed in the right direction?” These are the people who ensure that the functionality meets the requirements for success set during the initial stages. They get to the root of things, ask “why?” and “what if?” questions, decipher the strengths and weaknesses of IT solutions, and provide constructive criticism in order to refine the strategy. 

UX/UI expert

A user-friendly interface is crucial for any software and system. User experience is the key element in digital transformation that every organization should be striving to improve. 

Technology solutions cannot be considered a success until the end-users find them easy to use and navigate. Understanding the customer journey and developing an optimized experience requires the specialized skills of a UX/UI designer. These experts make sure IT solutions have a user-centric design. As such, someone in this role should have experience in developing systems with the end-user in mind.

Financial analyst 

What benefits can digital transformation bring to your business? What about ROI? Financial analysts articulate the financial value of digital transformation strategies, develop a business case, and present an accountability matrix. They work with all members and other finance professionals to ensure that the team looks at transformation activities from a financial standpoint. 

Afterword: Dream team management

Hiring highly experienced professionals to implement a digital transformation strategy is a lot but not enough. It takes a great deal of creativity and intellectual courage to look at a business model through the lens of technical capabilities.  As such, it’s equally important to engage team members with the right mindset and personality types to enable transformation capabilities across your organization.

While you are looking for specialized sets of soft skills to implement your digital initiative, NCube can help you by engaging skilled technology specialists. We have vast experience in building virtual tech teams in Kyiv, Ukraine, including notable companies, including Greenpeace, CrossEngage, and Encore. Let’s discuss your project!