Roadmap on Blockchain Transformation for Organizations

Abstract

Blockchain technology is currently a widely discussed topic. For many organizations the topic causes excitement about the opportunities for innovation but also insecurity and fear of losing their competitiveness. Most managers have heard of blockchain technology before and feel the pressure to go with the market and implement the technology. However, most organizations do not know how to develop their company towards blockchain. The lack of knowledge includes how to build up knowledge, launch a suitable project, finding a use case that matches the organization, aligning it with their strategy, which kind of blockchain to focus on and enabling a business transformation. In this thesis, a roadmap was developed that aims to supports organizations in their transformation towards blockchain technology and in understanding the potentials of this new technology. This artifact is then evaluated through a proof-of-concept by gathering data on relevance and practical applicability of the roadmap. This is done by an industry questionnaire and a practical application in a university class environment. The latter included an observation and a feedback questionnaire. The results show, that it is possible to support organizations with the developed roadmap. Blockchain project members in organizations show interest in the roadmap and the artifact is applicable in a practical situation. To further increase the value of this artefact, the author suggests improving the worksheets and checklists as well as implementing general suggestions for the improvement of the roadmap in the future. In addition, the worksheets and checklists for the missing phases could be added by future studies.