A dynamic set of technology options that are re-shaping the choices CIOs have. Ignore them and you are building in both risk and cost to your organization.

Build an IT legacy

Think five years down the road.

As a CIO or other leader, statistically speaking, you’ll probably be in the process of transitioning to a new role. Consider what you’re working on today, and what you’ve built for the next CIO stepping up and into your role. What will she be inheriting from you?

Recently, I was involved in one of those somewhat difficult early-stage discussions about one of the large-ish program efforts currently underway. (You know the kind: it started in the seven figures, and kept heading north from there as we uncovered more details of scope and impact).

I found a pause in the conversation somewhere between requirements, technology and process definitions that were creating apparent insurmountable issues in delivery. In that pause, I offered a simple reminder to the team:

“We’re not building a monument, you know.”

A few of the team chuckled and the conversation reset. It was a freeing moment.

The landscape that IT leaders manage these day is substantially different from what it once was. CIOs like me ‘grew up’ in an IT landscape of large, multi-year ERP programs and cumbersome data center rationalization/build outs. I once ran a global desktop client upgrade project that took nearly 24 months to complete. And we considered ourselves pretty snappy at the time.

But it’s 2015. And technology moves faster than ever before. ERP implementations are measured in months, not years. Apps are ready in weeks, not months. And if you are not planning to take advantage of that reality, you are almost certainly building in both risk and cost to your organization that you or your successor is going to have to deal with later.

And you are probably missing the opportunity to position your team for the growth they might achieve.

Technology Choices Reshaped

On my second day on the job, I stood in front of my new team and said, “Whatever platform you’re working on at the moment: you probably won’t be working on it five years from now.”

For some of my team, that was a shock.

For others, it was a relief. For all of them, it is certainly more true today than it has ever been.

There’s little in the technology space that hasn’t seen tremendous shift in the recent past. And there’s no reason to assume that the pace won’t continue. Cloud solutions and Everything-as-a-Service are creating a dynamic set of options that are re-shaping the choices we have. Ask your team often, “If we were making this choice as a new start-up, how would we solve the problem? Ok. Now, how do we get from here to there?”

The rest of the C-Suite is relying on you to help chart the course through a rapidly evolving technology landscape. As CIO, you will be responsible for guiding the investment in technology based on the best information you have at the time (just like any other business decision). But be aware of the risks of coupling yourself too tightly to a particular path, when the pace of technology innovation continues to disrupt. Know when and how you’re going to need to update your strategy to take advantage of those opportunities. Framing the planning process around the inevitability of change will change the way decisions are made, and mitigate the emotional investment in what should be a technical discussion.

Technology Architecture Designed for Change

If you can incorporate the inevitability of change into your strategic plan, you can create an architecture that is designed to enable – rather than hinder – a more open framework. In my team, we talk a lot about a ‘component-ized’ landscape. We build APIs, not integration. We make technology decisions already thinking of how we might unplug it again three or five years from now, and replace it with the next generation of technology.

Shifting the technical architecture to a ‘plug and play’ component model requires an organization that breaks down the walls. That thinks about end-to-end processes, and operates across traditional IT silos of function and platform. The buzz phrases in the CIO-sphere these days are a manifestation of the new pace of IT, and all contribute to our ability to shift more fluidly to accommodate as needed. The principles behind ‘Bi-Modal’ IT organizations, DevOps structures and Agile development methodologies are all aimed at creating the organizational structure that has the requisite flexibility to keep up with the technical shift. The goal in every case is to accommodate faster turn around and become a more adaptable delivery team.

IT Talent: Hire for Resilience

This approach takes a mental shift – when the digital transformation meets an enterprise shop, the team and our colleagues need a new set of skills to bridge the gap. When we can provision a new container in minutes, and stand up an environment dynamically, discussions about ‘uptime’ or service levels take on a whole new meaning. But only if we’ve integrated these capabilities into our planning.

This pace of change can be challenging to an IT function charged with minimizing risk, and ensuring stability. And both our organization and our colleagues are seeking leaders who can find ways to embrace and integrate these capabilities. When hiring, above all, I look for curiosity and resilience in rising talent, skills that will ensure we continue to identify the change we need to embrace and the way in which we’ll transition, before we even get there.

This is the time when IT – and IT leadership – has a whole new dimension of value to offer to our colleagues. And if we position ourselves well, we can create a whole new sense of enthusiasm across the organization for recognizing this next generation of capability for what it is: an opportunity.

We’re not constructing expensive monuments that will endure for ages.

We’re building a legacy of adaptability. 

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