Future-Proofing IT Initiatives in a Dynamic Landscape
I spoke with one of my friends recently about the technology that’s employed in his new company. He recently got a new role and realized how dated the previous business was. The conversation started like this. “So, guess what I’m working on,” he asked. “I’m not sure I follow,” I responded. “Guess what kind of computer I’m on,” he reiterated. “Dude, you got a Dell,” I jokingly replied. “A laptop,” he said, “a laptop in a docking station.”
He and I were having this conversation about a couple of weeks prior to him leaving. I was telling him that everyone should scrap the desktops and switch to laptops with docking stations. Employees can then leave with their laptops when they need to work from home. However, the business that he came from was dated, not just in technology but in overall thought.
My friend was pretty proud of that laptop and continued to take me through the remainder of the software and IT infrastructure that the business does. It was leaps and bounds above what he came from. However, it was already dated. I didn’t want to tell him that since I didn’t want to ruin his excitement.
But it’s true. Just when you believe you’ve entered a business with some cutting edge technology, it quickly becomes dated if it’s not dated already. Technology moves fast and it’s something to get used to.
The problem starts when businesses start chasing new technology and trends. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with experimenting with new technology, it does start to affect the business when new technology is constantly introduced into production environments.
You start building something that’s unnecessarily complicated. The staff proficiency increases and people start to wonder why? Why are we spending so much money on these systems? Can we not just utilize an off-the-shelf ERP system?
Whenever you hear non-technical people start asking whether they can remove some or all of the customization from the software and go back to the basics, it usually means that you’ve gone overboard.
Incorporating new systems can easily build up technical debt. You’ve invested time and money into the latest-and-greatest, but everyone is frustrated with it. You keep maintaining it because of the amount of money that you’ve invested already and in doing so, you continue to accumulate technical debt.
If your company is of a decent enough size, their should be an “innovations department.” One of my other friends actually worked in that very department. The whole purpose of that department was to seek out new technology and see if it makes sense to fit it inside of the existing infrastructure. For example, they found sensors that detected minuscule dust particle concentration. If enough of the concentration is present, the place could be engulfed in flames with a simple spark. This technology actually saved lives and was a great addition to the business.
Another example involved researching Google Glasses. After spending some time on potential use cases, it was decided that this would not serve a purpose within their company. There was never any integration with their production environment.
Software Development is notorious for experimentation. I’ve worked in environments where 3 different JavaScript libraries were added on top of a C# .NET environment, “just because it was trendy at the time and the developers wanted to experiment with it.” All of those JavaScript libraries are now obsolete and new developers need to continue to maintain them, with minimal documentation. How fun.
Stop worrying whether your business is modern and rushing into modernization. Take small and incremental steps into the modern world if you’re an already established business. If your business is on the verge of collapse or you’re just starting out, have fun experimenting.