The steady and rapid maturation of PLM and its various software solutions promises to improve digital transformation’s track record. PLM’s maturation is currently being demonstrated by offering better insights into the data being evaluated, providing a better grasp and management of new processes being implemented, and making it easier for people to trust in the ultimate benefits of digital transformation. I expect effective, enterprise-spanning collaboration to be front and center. Without that, no new product (or service or system) will succeed in the marketplace and/or with its users … or even get to market in the first place. This points to the criticality of people in digital transformation and why people are cited as a major cause of many digital transformation failures. These failures, estimated at three-fourths of all digital transformation projects, are inevitable. As long as users and managers don’t understand Digital Transformation, they will not accept it and may even actively resist it. In what I see as a corollary to Murphy’s Law (the idea that “anything that can go wrong will”) when digital transformation efforts fail too often, they will stoke all-too-real fears that lead people to thwart further efforts. There is nothing mysterious about digital […]