Hands up if you’ve been in discussions around your transformation programme being a “revolution” or an “evolution”.

It must have been about 20 years ago that I was in my first such discussion – to evolve our current policy administration and underwriting systems or to go on a revolution path of a new package/platform. (This was following a failed strategy of best of breed but that’s another post for another day).

Since that discussion I have been in many more evolution or evolution discussions.

Revolution appeals more to the futurists who see all of the faults of the current and some might say the opportunities that the “shinny”, maybe “silver bullets” that are in front of them; those who are prepared to take the leap of faith – deal with the step change – put heart and soul into changing everything about the operating model of the business and as such “green field” is often also in the mix.

Evolution appeals more to those that would derisk the leap of faiths and the ability to think ahead about the future and believe that the current IT estate just needs to be fixed and improved; maybe it’s about consolidation and simplification – it’s a steady and gentle transition of the current estate and making it fit for the future – not everything has to change.

Now roll the clock forward – the pace of change is definitely faster than what it was back in the early 2000s – or should I say the potential for the pace of change is there.

New entrants take the revolution approach – they don’t have a legacy and they can and probably have to take the leap of faith to break into the market.

The start up methodologies that are based on the lean start up, the MVP, the trialling and scaling of new business models and configuration of platforms with significant research and analysis of the incremental improvement of every suggestion that is progressed and prioritised through value is all part of that world.

That world is a revolution (business model) evolution (evolve the future world with insight).

With the world moving at the pace it is – we all know we can’t sign up to multi year programmes that will deliver at scale as we approach 2030 – with requirements based on how we work today, and potentially not enough challenges and thought about how we will be able to work in the future.

The key has to be to “cycle” around the “concept” – to assess tooling and to start configuring and trialling and to scale up and continue to “cycle” as the new buisness model evolves and scales.

This is more than being agile with your programme and project teams – this is embracing and adaptive and agile mindset across your “run/service” operation and you change operation – it’s about being the service and change closer together and it’s about evolving your business in the most revolutionary way.