I had a great technology brunch on Sunday, and as usual, we got into some great discussion. The discussion was around our tangled mess of technology in most IT shops, and does it help or hurt the business.
The complexity in most IT shops to me is physical environment, hardware, software and applications, not to forget data. True that organizations don't set out to build complex or confusing - but it sure happens. Many times at the hands of the business itself.
Mergers and aquisitions add to the layer of complexity, we don't always bring new organizations into the fold without their systems or applications. This baggage takes money and time to maintain - therefore complexity takes away agility.
So the question around the table was how do we bring simplicity back to the forefront we do. Given the enviornment of today, with less staff, less money, less time and more demands. There are many things taking our staff time - one of them is complexity. Adding to this frustration is the lack of documentation, standard operation procedures and project management.
There was general consensus of the CIOs needing to be at the table with Senior Management to establish some realistic expecations, deliverables and business priority. There are some standard IT operational expectations around the physical plant, documentation, knowledge base and hardware - that is doing IT right.
The big discussion was around application catalog management. Maintain your application catalog - meaning, a strict process for new applications to be introduced into the environment, a strict retirement process and documentation around all these applications. Business priority agreed upon for each application, disaster recovery plan for each application, identified application owners and support identified, plus communicated. Control the application wish list and "have to have" and get management agreement that the new application brings value, and business competitive advantage.
The other topic brought up was new technology - do we need all the latest greatest technology? Does it have a strategic advantage to us? Don't go add complexity to the infrastructure for the sake of new technology or cool technology. Ensure it brings true value and benefit.
Make simplicity a strategic initative in your IT organization. Assign taskes to each manager to drive this initiative throughout the IT organization and embedded into daily operations.
Keep it positive!
Scott Arnett
scott.arnett@charter.net
About Me
- Scott Arnett
- Scott Arnett is an Information Technology & Security Professional Executive with over 30 years experience in IT. Scott has worked in various industries such as health care, insurance, manufacturing, broadcast, printing, and consulting and in enterprises ranging in size from $50M to $20B in revenue. Scott’s experience encompasses the following areas of specialization: Leadership, Strategy, Architecture, Business Partnership & Acumen, Process Management, Infrastructure and Security. With his broad understanding of technology and his ability to communicate successfully with both Executives and Technical Specialists, Scott has been consistently recognized as someone who not only can "Connect the Dots", but who can also create a workable solution. Scott is equally comfortable playing technical, project management/leadership and organizational leadership roles through experience gained throughout his career. Scott has previously acted in the role of CIO, CTO, and VP of IT, successfully built 9 data centers across the country, and is expert in understanding ITIL, PCI Compliance, SOX, HIPAA, FERPA, FRCP and COBIT.
