Transitioning to an integrated delivery ecosystem is a journey that requires careful planning, but it’s also one that has incredible potential to benefit your organization and its stakeholders. Building standardized tools and consistent processes directly into your ecosystem will allow your application teams to work independently and cross-functionally, but always within the guardrails defined by the enterprise. It will empower them to deliver new capabilities quickly, securely, and cost-effectively.

At Booz Allen, we partner with a range of government agencies to design, deliver, and continually enhance some of the most diverse, complex delivery ecosystems ever built. Our experience has shown that there are five critical factors for success:

• Define your strategy carefully. Determine exactly which technology accelerators will benefit your agency and its mission most. Every organization is unique, and success is predicated on bringing things along at the right speed and in the right way. 
• Choose the right success criteria. Focus on providing what the organization needs by using well-defined measures of success. A sharp focus on needs creates a more complete vision, manages or even reverses sprawl, and breaks down silos.
• Be modular. Use smart architecture and open technologies to future-proof your agency. Modularity allows you to smoothly on-ramp future technologies and off-ramp obsolete legacy components. 
• Take full advantage of automation. Focus on enabling innately human work through pervasive automation. Providing your people with responsive and agile tools will allow them to concentrate on what they do best.
• Build in security at the core. Use integrated native security to minimize the burden on developers. End-to-end DevSecOps allows teams to rapidly create, test, and deploy new capabilities without creating undue risk. 

This is an evolution, not a revolution—take a thoughtful and intentional approach to carefully design the right steps for your needs in preparing the enterprise to converge on a modern technology ecosystem.

Despite its complexity, this doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out journey. We’ve been able to take ecosystems from whiteboard design to production in as little as 8 months. It’s not as big a leap as you might think. Most agencies already have some advanced methods and tools in place, such as agile, DevOps, and cloud. By properly aligning these foundational pieces and beginning to layer in appropriate tools and practices, you can begin your transition to an integrated delivery ecosystem with minimal disruption. Then you can move on to building products that empower your workforce and delight your customers.

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