Evolving Your Salesforce Org and DevOps Capabilities

Following the roll-out of your Salesforce solution in the previous chapters, in this first chapter in Part 4, The Continuous Improvement Phase, of your Salesforce program, you will be guided through the nature of and activities in the continuous improvement phase. Then, we’ll go through the concept of product organizations and why it matters for the success of your Salesforce program. Next, we’ll cover program and platform governance in the continuous improvement phase. Finally, we’ll introduce DevOps and how to evolve your Salesforce DevOps capabilities.

By the end of the chapter, you will understand the key activities in the continuous improvement phase. You will learn why you should aspire to become a product organization, and how you can start the transformation of your organization. After reading this and applying the concepts, you will be able to update and maintain your Salesforce roadmap and manage...

An overview of the continuous improvement phase

This phase of the Salesforce program begins the moment you go live with your first users, as illustrated in Figure 12.1, and it doesn’t end (unless your organization decides to stop using Salesforce).

Figure 12.1 – Continuous improvement concurrent with roll-out

We can summarize the key continuous activities as follows:

• Transforming your organization to become a product organization
• Governing your Salesforce program and platform
• Evolving your Salesforce DevOps capabilities
• Managing and governing the quality of your data
• Leveraging your C360 data to maximize your Salesforce investments
• Leading and inspiring the peers in your organization

The last three topics will be covered in the next chapter.

Let’s get started with product organizations.

Transforming your organization to become a product organization

In the last decade, digital transformation initiatives – recently accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic – have become ubiquitous throughout medium and large organizations. Literature is quick to point to the failure rate of these initiatives – the reasons cited often being a lack of user involvement, cross-functional coordination, executive commitment, and strategic alignment. Most of these areas are addressed by the product organization.

The concept of product management originated from Procter & Gamble, where Neil McElroy wrote a memo requesting to hire people and structure them around a single product or brand. The ultimate responsibility of brand men would be to manage the product life cycle, sales, and promotions – supported by field testing and customer interaction. Many additional and complementary concepts, theories, and practices have emerged since then, including Kanban (1940s...

Governing your Salesforce program and platform

With many changes happening to your Salesforce program and the platform to serve your organization, having solid governance in place is key for stability and growth.

Let’s begin by looking at your Salesforce CoE role in the governance of your Salesforce program and platform.

Updating your Salesforce CoE

Your Salesforce CoE is still the overarching governance body responsible for overseeing your Salesforce program. It consolidates knowledge, guidelines for ways of working, and change management, and manages the governance structures and forums for business, technical, and data governance.

The key leadership roles in your Salesforce CoE in the continuous improvement phase are as follows:

• Salesforce platform owner: This is the owner and overall accountable for your Salesforce platform, and its roadmap:
  • Some organizations also refer to this role as chief product owner or product manager. If your Salesforce platform...

Evolving your Salesforce DevOps capabilities

To unlock more value from your Salesforce investment and achieve success while having peace of mind in the continuous improvement phase of your Salesforce program, you need to understand and enhance your organization’s DevOps capabilities.

The process and capabilities you used in the development and roll-out phase of your initial Salesforce release were suitable for those phases – initial implementation and roll-out. Now, you need to set up your Salesforce program to be able to continuously take in feedback, build, release, and ensure the usage and adoption of new features – all while making sure your Salesforce organization is performant, reliable, and secure.

Let’s start by introducing DevOps.

Introducing DevOps

In 2004, Charles A. O’Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman published a paper titled The Ambidextrous Organization (you can read the paper here: https://hbr.org/2004/04/the-ambidextrous...

Summary

We have covered a lot of topics in this first chapter in Part 4, The Continuous Improvement Phase, of your Salesforce program. First, you learned about the nature of activities in the continuous improvement phase. Then, we introduced the concept of product organizations, why you should aspire to become one, and how you can start the transformation of your organization. Next, we discussed program and platform governance in the continuous improvement phase. Finally, we talked about the history of DevOps and how to evolve your Salesforce DevOps capabilities.

You have now transitioned well into the continuous improvement phase of your Salesforce program – beyond initial project implementation. As you implement the concepts and structures laid out in this chapter, you should begin to see an increase in the rate at which value is delivered to your users and a more reliable system.

In the next chapter, we’ll cover governing and leveraging your Customer360 data...