The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The five pillars in Sharon Goldman’s 2018 CIO article are product and portfolio management, a modern operating model, scaled agile teams, risk and governance, and data as an asset. Together, they describe transformation as an enterprise-wide way to connect customer value, funding, architecture, teams, controls, and data—not simply an IT tools upgrade. The framework is presented in the article through comments from Steve Bates, then identified as a KPMG principal; it should be understood as the approach described there, not assumed to be KPMG’s current formal framework.
1. Product and portfolio management: fund learning, not just delivery
The starting point is whether a product or service addresses a customer need. Faster software delivery is not valuable on its own if it produces something customers do not need. The article links that customer focus to empowered product managers, design thinking, user experience, and mapping customer journeys and value streams.
Funding is part of the same discipline. Rather than committing all capital to a large plan before customer response is known, the article advocates allocating smaller amounts incrementally. Pilots and early releases can reveal whether an idea merits further investment. Bates describes the approach as “funding quickly, releasing small amounts of capital and getting quick wins or fails.”
Reusable assets can also help teams build on existing capabilities instead of repeatedly solving the same problem. The aim is to connect investment decisions to evidence about customer value and to adjust the next tranche of work accordingly.
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2. The modern operating model: organize around a unified customer outcome
Customer experiences often cross functional boundaries, while traditional organizations may divide responsibility among separate business and technology groups. The article argues for integrated, product-oriented teams that can coordinate around a shared outcome rather than passing work from silo to silo.
That operating model is connected to architecture. Large, tightly coupled applications can be decomposed into smaller components or microservices, while open APIs make capabilities and data available for controlled reuse. These technical choices can support a more connected product, but they do not create an integrated organization by themselves: teams and decision-making also need to align around the product.
3. Scale agile beyond IT teams
Agile methods inside a technology department may have limited effect if business leaders and other functions do not understand or participate in the changes. Product decisions, funding, risk, and customer experience all involve people outside software delivery. The article therefore treats scaling agile as a leadership and enterprise coordination challenge, not merely a way to add more agile teams.
Bates warns that “Many of the greatest benefits around agile get lost because companies lack a management frame of reference to understand the impact of change outside the IT department.” In practical terms, leaders need to understand how changed delivery rhythms affect planning, governance, dependencies, and the business units that use or support the product.
4. Risk and governance: build controls into delivery
Agile and DevOps delivery need to work alongside regulatory and organizational controls. The article’s answer is to involve security, privacy, audit, and control expertise throughout product development rather than treating compliance as a final gate after a product is built.
That changes the timing of risk work, not its importance. Teams should consider security and control from inception through delivery and subsequent improvement. As Bates puts it, “The product or service needs to be secure and controlled from inception to end.”
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5. Data as an asset: make reuse governed and useful
Transaction, customer, and process data may help improve products and customer experiences when it can be accessed and reused appropriately. The article connects that opportunity to modern architecture: expose data through APIs and create reusable components, while retaining governance over quality, security, and access.
Accessibility without control is not the goal. Bates characterizes modern architecture as decomposing the environment into reusable parts with “a centrally managed set of controls and governance over data quality.” In this framing, data becomes a product and organizational asset only when teams can use it reliably and responsibly.
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How the five pillars fit together
The pillars are interdependent. Product management identifies customer needs and informs staged investment; integrated teams and modular architecture help deliver against those needs; enterprise-wide agile adoption coordinates the change; and embedded controls and governed data make reuse safer. Improving one area in isolation can leave the broader delivery system constrained—for example, faster engineering alone does not resolve siloed funding or late risk reviews.
Goldman’s article was published by CIO on June 16, 2018. Its five-pillar model is useful as a way to examine the connections among product decisions, operating structure, delivery, risk, and data, but the article does not establish that this is KPMG’s current formal framework or a current industry standard.
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