Has IT become the Missing Link?
It's been a few months since my last post and this is something that has been on the back of the brain for some time. As a long time IT infrastructure consultant, I wanted to share some thoughts and what appears to be a trend in the startup software industry, for better or worse, that is yet to be determined.
What I'm going to discuss seems to have started with the devops movement, but has recently really taken shape in many startup software companies. What is this phenomenon? It's the lack of an IT department.
Over the past two and half years of consulting, I have been watching something extraordinary taking place in many startup organizations. I mean it's no secret that IT has been forever looked at as a cost center, a blocker to development and in some cases deemed as a necessary evil. What I am finding in my field research and discussions with many in the startup industry, is most are not leveraging an IT department for any aspect of their business. Many are simply utilizing the in-house expertise of their developers or management teams to fill the gaps of what used to be handled by traditional IT organizations.
So has IT become the Missing Link?
Recent trends may be suggesting this, but is it GOOD for these companies? After all, it is IT that typically provides structure, process, governance, security, architecture design considerations, disaster avoidance, backups, monitoring to name a few.
So what happens when companies remove those functions from their business or lessen the value of these functions?
In a nutshell, I'll call it organized chaos. When you remove structure, process, governance, security, design, disaster avoidance, backups or monitoring from a companies per view, its only a matter of time before you will be faced with trouble. It starts with a slow leak, cracks in the operation start to appear, gaps in expertise develop more and more, until eventually the inevitable happens; a security breach, an unrecoverable crash, a system wide outage, you fill in the _ _ _ _. Now I'm not saying that organizations cannot be successful at the start without an IT department, many have obviously proven that it can be done. But it does become more challenging to sustain this model as the organization grows, requiring the organization to rethink their strategies for IT.
With all that said, I feel IT needs a major facelift. IT must EVOLVE to stay relevant and here are a few ideas!!
- IT must not be the driver, but rather the business should drive IT
- IT must work to enable the business to be successful not block the business
- IT should provide relevant tools to enable organizations to run faster, smarter and more secure
- IT should align with development efforts and become as agile as possible
- IT must focus on results, participating in SCRUM meetings
- The IT organization should be partnered with development teams
- IT must routinely meet with their development counterparts to set priorities, remove obstacles and most importantly ensure they are continually delivering value
I would love to hear your opinions on this, please share, like, comment, thanks for reading!!
Chris McCoy - Founding Consultant