Moving IT from “utility company” to “strategic leaders of the business”…

Podcasts

7 Mar

“Redefining IT and Innovation Strategies” on the Ecosystems podcast

Controversial question: Do innovative technologies need to move out of IT in order to thrive, or do we need to move governance and security out of IT and into facilities management as our “workplaces” have become increasingly tech-centric? There is a difference between achieving an acceptable level of security and governance vs. having a forward-looking strategy that is going to grow the business, return investment to the business, modernize the business, or make the business more productive.

Think of it this way: Several years ago, traditional IT infrastructure engineers began writing “infrastructure as code”, and automating deployment of infrastructure. Similarly, application developers now write code for their solutions and deploy infrastructure through CI/CD pipelines. As the knowledge of technology practitioners continues to blend, so too is there tremendous opportunity to shape what IT can and should be in the future.

Ask yourself: If you wrote a press release following a successful technology rollout, what would it say? Are your cloud technology choices driven by guiding principles and targeted outcomes (the “why”), or by a solution-first approach? Are you falling in love with the problem, or the solution? Many times we jump to the solution without being clear about what the problem is. Which is your organization incentivizing? Is your organization set up from a cultural, organizational, and leadership perspective to make the most of technologies such as artificial intelligence, low-code, and the modern data platform.

Join Mark, Andrew, Ana, and James for the debate…

Our conversation explores the importance of falling in love with the problem rather than the solution. We emphasize the need to focus on outcomes rather than outputs and challenges the traditional mindset of measuring productivity. The discussion also delves into the role of IT in organizations and the need for organizational change to fully embrace new technologies. Finally, it addresses the question of where Power Platform should sit in large organizations and the challenges of IT culture. The conversation explores the need for change management in organizations and the potential shift of governance and security responsibilities from IT to facilities management. It also discusses the blending of roles between infrastructure engineers and application developers, and the opportunity to reshape the future of IT. The conversation concludes with the idea of a department of innovation and the split of responsibilities in large enterprises.

What You Will Learn:

Fall in love with the problem, not the solution;
Focus on outcomes, not just outputs;
Embrace organizational change to fully leverage new technologies;
Consider the role of IT in enabling innovation and user-centric design;
Change management is crucial in organizations undergoing digital transformation;
Governance and security responsibilities may need to be moved from IT to facilities management;
Blending of roles between infrastructure engineers and application developers is happening, leading to a reimagining of IT;
The future of IT organizations may involve a department of innovation and a split of responsibilities.

Welcome James Joyce back to the Ecosystems Podcast as our returning guest. James is a big thinker on the topic of cloud strategy and how absolutely massive organizations build (or in many cases neglect) the “why” that’s driving them to adopt new cloud technologies. He lives this every day as a Managing Director at Microsoft Partner Applied Information Sciences (AIS).

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