Rants On The Tech Life

Rant #1 : Hollywood and the Cloud

I was watching a movie the other day and in the middle of one scene on of the characters starts talking about the “cloud” as if it was some simplified, ubiquitous pop-culture concept like a Justin Beiber song.  It made me start to think and reflect on how main stream tech has become.  For me there is some satisfaction and self-validation that I chose a career 15 years ago that has become this popular, but as I sat here thinking about the light-hearted over-simplification of this scene it made me realize and appreciate the complexity behind what the “cloud” really is and what it has done to change the way we live.  I also, started to worry a bit about the fact that could the embracement of “tech” in main stream also create an over simplification of these very technical concepts and how they really work and add value?  It also creates the “illusion” that this stuff is easy.  It’s not.  I’m working a technology transformation right now at a fortune 200 company, and I promise you it’s the last thing from easy.  There are people, process and technology implications all throughout this work and if anything the nature of the technology is not only a technical paradigm shift, it will necessitate the need for organizations to foster a technology mindset even if they traditionally don’t see themselves as technology companies.

Rant #2 : Cloud is sexy?

Let’s not kid ourselves, abstraction is sexy.  It gives us the ability to bypass the gory, syntactic details and have semi intelligent conversations about things we probably understand less than 50%.  That’s ok, because I think that is indication of why technology has become so main stream because at the end of the day when technology “just works” (as Steve Jobs says) we all win.  As a Tech Exec, I’m constantly awed by the rapid paradigm shifts that occur with technology adoption and trends.  Let’s just start here, between 2010 and today Cloud adoption has increased by over 500% across all Fortune 500 companies (public, hybrid, native).  The main driver for this adoption is the expectation of a reduction of capital expenditures for IT over the long term and cloud is the silver bullet.  Again, abstract and this is great in the abstract but I ask the question how does it truly drive down capital expenditures?  TBD.

Rant #3 : The Manufacturing Mindset of IT

For the last decade at most large companies, IT has been a modeled itself after a “manufacturing” function within organizations.  Business spits out business requirements, IT provides estimates, swags, T-shirt sizes, etc and then stands up a project.  The business requirements go through the cycle of design, development, test and release.  Wash rinse and repeat.  Metrics are created to monitor execution (defects, productivity, budget spend/burn and time to market) and once the requirements are signed off and the features are released to production the teams celebrate with all you can eat meat buffets and the heroics, long nights and many pizza’s are part of the culture.  All of this is fine, however there is one thing that is missing from all of this and the consequences of this has huge implications.  Accountability of the product, features and management of these virtual features after they are delivered and the project teams are disbanded.  This model churns out widgets, which is what IT organizations are charged to do, however after so many years of growing appetites for digital, disconnected product strategies, customers end up with feature bloat and products that are sub par and have no mechanism of have a true feedback loop to make them better.  This is the past, things are changing and I’m extremely optimistic about the future.

Part 3: If I’m a business executive, why do I really care?  What’s the value?

Outside of all the abstraction and coalescence around this trendy technology jargon, if I’m a CEO of a company I have to ask the question … So what?  Why do I care and what do my customers get out of all of this.  The “Holy Grail” of IT has mostly come down to three themes : Better, Faster, Cheaper.  Many opinions and experiments to try and balance these three out.  Also, many dollars and organizational transformations have gone into putting companies in the best position to capitalize on new ways of working.  Think of it like this.  Create amazingly new, highly engaging digital features and products, make the cycle item to get those into the hands of customers faster and while your at it drive down costs.  This is the edict and the expectation when CIO’s ask for increases in capital expenditure for IT.  Not to mention there is a growing appetite for digital capabilities driven by traditional product line leaders.  Small start-ups and fintech companies are putting tremendous amount of pressure on the larger more established institutions and have helped CEO’s of these fortune 500 companies come to the realization that deep pockets for IT investment doesn’t always provide the expected value they seek unless their organizations have the accommodating enterprise agility to move fast in a market that will absolutely not wait on you.  That’s why they should care.

Part 4: Embracing the idea of a technology driven mindset (Skating to where the hockey puck is going)

Wayne Gretzky once said, he doesn’t go where the hockey puck is, but rather where the hockey puck is going.  As business leaders, customers expectations have changed.  We no longer have the same cost/benefit structures to drive our decision making.  When we wake up and read our FlipBoard or whatever blog, articles we see that technology is eating the world we live it.  So even though you may have a profitable company and a “kush” market position right now, business leaders need to be proactive in defining and fostering a technology mindset throughout their organization in all corners, nooks and crannies.