Without proper planning, backcountry winter camping in Canada can be deadly. With temperatures that can easily drop below -25 degrees Celsius (-13 degrees Fahrenheit) during polar vortex conditions while you are out there with little more than snowshoes (or backcountry skis), a tent, backpack and a sleeping bag (and enough nutrition to handle minor emergency situations), any mistakes or omissions from your kit are readily amplified into disasters, especially when you are remote from mobile services.
Part of proper planning means thoroughly testing your kit beforehand on a small trip, at more manageable winter temperatures, to be sure everything works before going into the real deep freeze. However, even this might not be enough. For example, on a recent winter camping trip, I took a new winter camping stove promising higher rates of efficiency at bitterly cold temperatures. However, while out at temperatures the wrong side of -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit), I could not get the stove to work, despite it having worked at “warmer” winter temperatures on a test run.
Luckily, I had my trusty old stove with me as a backup; otherwise it would have been impossible to melt snow for water and to prepare food, a little problem that could quickly escalate into a disaster. Upon investigating later, I discovered that the manufacturer specified a special valve for temperatures below -25 degrees Celsius (-13 degrees Fahrenheit), something I did not come across in my preparation. Never forget: Things can and do go wrong, often in spite of our best efforts.
There are three key lessons in this little story applicable to successful digital transformation:
- Proper preparation prevents poor performance (planning is essential)—Digital transformation impacts the entire organization. Not understanding this impact and assessing the readiness of the organization for the transformation can seriously negatively impact the entire organization when things go wrong
- Have a Plan B (a spare stove)—Things do go wrong, and fallback planning is required to ensure that business does not come to what could be a very expensive standstill for hours, days or even weeks while restitution efforts are being applied to an unexpected outage
- Test with real data (real conditions)—As IT practitioners, we know the value of testing. Production data can be essential for testing digital transformation initiatives. However, production data are not generally allowed into lower environments due to the associated risks. Regardless, plans need to be made to ensure that the test data are as realistic as possible to reduce the risk of high-impact surprises arising during production.
With respect to point 1, for a more rigorous approach to digital transformation readiness assessments, please read my recent Journal article, “Attaining Digital Transformation Readiness.”
Editor’s note: For further insights on this topic, read Guy Pearce’s recent Journal article, “Attaining Digital Transformation Readiness,” ISACA Journal, volume 1, 2020.
