Evaluating the CCoE KPIs

The previous section introduced the CCoE tenets. Using some questions, this section discusses how you can support your CCoE to work toward those tenets. Later, this will help you derive the relevant list of KPIs to measure the impact of the CCoE.

Research tenet

• Business goals – What is your current footprint in terms of geography, industry, and customer segments? For example, is your organization a small or medium-size business, or is it an enterprise? What are your plans for expansion in the next year?

• AWS practices – What AWS practices are needed to support your business goals? Skill needs will vary with each practice. Existing skill availability varies. When staffing your CCoE, consider a pyramid-based approach, with varying levels of experience in a given skill area.

• Skill locations – How do your current locations and skills availability align? Create an organizational map that shows resources within the practice, including the locations where they are operating.

  Tip: Because notice periods are often substantial and vary by location, we recommend identifying the to-be-hired (TBH) positions up front. Identify resources who perform multiple roles and the time frame in which to re-prioritize their workload. This gives you a view of what the resourcing effort will look like.

• Resource skill matrix – Capture the current skill alignments of the CCoE (if already staffed) and your wider organization. This will help you plan for resourcing appropriately.

  Tip: To identify the current footprint and potential training needs, perform an AWS Learning Needs Analysis exercise. To learn more about this exercise and it how can be conducted for your organization, reach out to your AWS Enablement Manager. You can also use any organization-wide tagging of skills that might already be in place (drawn from the HR resource onboarding process).

Evangelize tenet

• Communication plan – Set up mechanisms to engage field teams and evangelize the CCoE: Your field teams (local CEOs, business unit leads, profit and loss (P&L) leads, account leads, sales, presales, bid, and pricing) must view your CCoE as a collaborative partner in helping your customers. Field teams need to understand how the CCoE can help them in this process.

  Internal roadshows or town-hall sessions are a good vehicle for engagement. Newsletters and internal portals can also help disseminate information to your field teams. Plan for both one-time and ongoing engagements with the field teams.

• Asset usage – The CCoE will lead the effort in developing assets to help reduce delivery cost, provide your workforce with relevant skills, and support the sales and bid processes. It's important to define a process to track the usage of these assets by the field teams. This will tell you what is working, what is not, and what needs to change.

  You can systemically track downloads of assets and views of pages. Incentivize field teams to ask the CCoE questions (for example, use a points system). The CCoE Project Management Office (PMO) can follow up and ask for feedback.

• Feedback mechanism – Define a process that the field teams can follow to provide feedback to the CCoE. Also define how the CCoE can advertise or market their assets internally. Examples include how many ideas or how much feedback a team or resource is contributing. Marketing mechanisms include an existing web portal, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scoring, and real-time feedback.

• Usage encouragement – Think of how you will incentivize your field teams to collaborate with the CCoE. The CCoE should not be considered an extension of your delivery team. Instead, they should be aligned with your field teams and empowered to evangelize when delivering value for your customer.

  Tip: To encourage field teams and the CCoE to work with each other, use non-monetary incentive options. Examples include thank-you cards, email from senior leadership, and vocal recognition in team meetings.

Apply tenet

• Feedback flywheel – Define a mechanism to capture inputs from your field teams. Field teams should have a processes for sharing lessons learned and field experiences with the CCoE team so that the CCoE can incorporate the information into their asset roadmap.

  Tip: Supplement the offline feedback from the field teams with regularly scheduled meetings to ensure that the CCoE and field teams are fully aligned.

• Information dissemination – How will the AWS business practice and the CCoE team propagate the best practices, assets, and other deliverables to the field teams?

• Bid process and presales support – How will the CCoE support the bid and presales teams during request for proposal (RFP) responses?

  Tip: The CCoE can own the solution and provide subject-matter expert (SME) inputs and estimation inputs.

Lead tenet

• Delivery consulting – CCoE resources can help accelerate the delivery phase for your customers through limited-duration consulting to your existing delivery teams.

  Tip: Define a loaning process for CCoE resources to temporarily assist delivery teams. The loaning process can include the percentage of time spent on the consultation.

• Engagement model – How long will a CCoE member remain engaged to support a delivery team? Is the engagement short, medium, or long term? Such a consulting or engagement model should not be more than few weeks. CCoE resources are not replacements for your delivery team.

Mentor tenet

• Community of practice – To create a community of practice, foster mentoring opportunities. This will create an inclusive atmosphere and encourage other employees to learn more and contribute. This can include programs such as aspiring area of depth, where employees can pursue their interests and build their careers while they help your organization and the customer.

• Crowdsourcing knowledge – How do you ensure the benefits of CCoE are not limited just to those working on the requests for proposal (RFPs), but are available to all employees? One way is to use a mechanism such as an Answer portal, where technical questions could be submitted by any employee. CCoE resources can review questions and provide feedback.

• Training the trainer for CCoE – To make the CCoE a force multiplier for itself, use a train the trainer approach. After you have staffed motivated resources for the CCoE, you can consider developing an approach in which experts in one skill can gradually upskill themselves in other areas.

  Tip: To support upskilling, use shadowing and reverse shadowing.

Scale tenet

• CCoE front door – What is the mechanism for the field teams to gain access to the CCoE resources? How do you plan to scale the CCoE operations efficiently? Consider creating a dedicated Project Management Office (PMO) to handle the day-to-day operations of the CCoE. The PMO resources can handle any undifferentiated heavy lifting in the CCoE operations.

• Self-service mechanisms – What types of self-service mechanisms can you put in place for the field teams to find information? For example, what assets, collateral, and past experiences will help the field during the sale and delivery stages?

  Tip: Use Amazon Bedrock to build customized generative AI solutions to help your field teams quickly access your CCoE assets.

• CCoE scope – What are the plans for incorporating the other functions (for example, Legal, Fin-ops, Contracting, and Account Leadership) into the scope of the CCoE? Typically, these are existing functions within organizations. Having them under the CCoE banner promotes consistency and a one-team behavior.

• CCoE footprint – How do you plan to expand the size of your CCoE? We recommend planning for growth based on your business's growth. Because the CCoE is a strategic investment, align its growth with your overall targets. After you finalize headcount projections, you can plan for hiring and lateral movements.

• Incentivizing innovation – Think about how to incorporate an incentive mechanism to encourage CCoE resources to innovate continuously.

• Performance management of CCoE resources – The resources who are part of your CCoE should be able to grow within your organization while being part of the CCoE. Review your current performance-management practices in light of the roles that CCoE resources are expected to perform, and make adjustments as needed.

• Recognition of CCoE resources – Establish a plan for recognizing performance and success within this part of the organization.