The short answer is YES. As a tech leader you want to move easily and quickly through the process of unlocking new long-term revenue channels, respond to new business opportunities, enhance the customer experience, addg and amend features, improve the efficiency of your internal processes and so much more.

Think back to how long it took to get information online from a flip phone – that legacy technology doesn’t serve the new world we live in. Now, with a smartphone in hand, the potential is limitless. That’s the way it feels when you’re on the other side of the application modernization journey. It feels like ease when you’re living in a state of agility. You’re at point A: legacy, outdated, clunky software, systems and processes.

You need to get to point B: a nimble and swift infrastructure that allows you to capture all that the future has to offer. Point A to B is a quantum leap and that journey changes everything. If you use tried, tested and true frameworks and best practices, you can get to your destination faster and be more prepared to take advantage of the many rewards of modernization. For some large enterprise businesses, those first steps during a modernization are the hardest part, because (as with any journey) there can be trepidation about getting started.

At your organization, you might have some internal detractors who wonder if it’s worth doing at all. Consider this: Research by McKinsey & Company found that organizations with “developer velocity” in the top quartile achieve 55% higher innovation and as much as five times faster revenue growth. And you don’t need to be a big business to see some gains: The top 25% of app-enabled small businesses reported annual sales growth of up to 8.7% and job uplifts of up to 4.5% when compared to non-app users. Simply put – when you embrace “agility” on all levels – people, process and technology - it pays. From a technology perspective, Cloud-native platforms drive agility. They are predicted to serve as the foundation for more than 95% of new digital initiatives in 2025 - up from less than 40% in 2021, according to Couchbase. Everyone is moving to the cloud, but there is a danger of wasting money on digital transformation efforts if you don’t have the right engine driving them.

The irony is that if you’re going to reimagine your IT infrastructure so it can be nimbler and more responsive to whatever pops up on the horizon, you must embrace an agile methodology in project management before you start your app modernization journey. Adopting an agile approach matters just as much as the technologies you choose to drive your digital transformation. It’s a critical first leg of the application modernization journey that allows you to truly begin to migrate your applications into a modern, cloud-native environment. From there you can strategically leverage key technologies and embrace a process that allows you to deploy and update your applications quickly and do it as securely as possible. Here’s one way to think of it: Achieving “agility” and adopting Agile is the key to the vehicle. Once you have that key in hand, you can confidently jump into your state-of-the-art tech stack. If your tech stack includes Cloud Accelerators, you can be confident you’ve got top quality and security. When you’re fuelled with a powerful, automated DevSecOps practice, there is no stopping your velocity.

Over the last 18 years, we’ve been riding shotgun as the GPS for many enterprise clients. You know that safe feeling when you hear your GPS tell you which lane to merge into and which exit to take? That’s us. And this playbook is a high-level view of what it takes to deliver a successful application modernization. Reference this playbook, share it with your colleagues. And remember, the growth happens within the people, as much as the tech and the revenue, so enjoy the ride.