ABSTRACT
Jane Jacobs’ aphorism “new ideas need old buildings” is particularly evocative for discussing digital transformation. Employee demands for better technology and workarounds using their own devices has forced transformation onto organisations almost through a process of stealth. With digital transformation already commenced in some form, then consideration is needed within the organisation for post hoc patterns. Once the opportunity to apply a pattern has been lost and an anti-pattern has been deployed as a makeshift workaround, the only opportunity that remains is to take remedial action by applying an anti-anti-pattern. An anti-pattern is an action or behaviour that responds to a situation in a way that appears to be a solution in the short term but is revealed to be counter-productive in the longer term. The only truism that can be consistently applied to digital transformation is that it is a continuous process.
