Digital Transformation Is Mostly People

Tech is the easy part. People are the hard part.

At Qantas, the infrastructure under the app was groaning. Every new feature we layered on slowed delivery, testing, and release. At the same time, we saw the opportunity: the booking page was due for a complete rethink. A refreshed design could deliver more customer benefit and unlock new revenue for the business.

We’d wanted to rebuild it for years, but the business case never landed. Quick wins always won out over deeper change. It wasn’t until the tech began to crumble that the cultural readiness appeared.

The challenge wasn’t the code. It was the conversation. Blocking out months of the roadmap meant saying no to everything else. It meant shifting the way leadership thought about value-not as a feature ticked off this quarter, but as a foundation for the next five years.

When we finally got the buy-in and delivered it, something shifted. The tech was better, yes. But more importantly, the people who’d backed the decision now believed in what a bolder customer experience could look like.

That’s the thing about transformation.
You can ship platforms, deploy APIs, migrate systems. But until the people are ready to run with you, nothing moves.

Velocity comes when culture catches up to code.