This is where we typically survey the leading IT Think-Tanks for insightful views on technology trends for the coming year and share them with you. We at Bayside Associates think they’re getting too far ahead of themselves trying to out-forecast each other on the impact of Artificial Intelligence, Predictive Analytics, and Block Chain.
For 2020, we believe Enterprise IT Organizations are now becoming for their companies what “Shadow IT” used be - IT savvy consultants that are committed to understanding new business opportunities, rapidly delivering a version of these capabilities without taking months and millions of dollars to do so, and not getting hung up on all the complexities needed to scale the solution before we even know if its viable. And we think this is a very good thing!
How are they doing this? By harnessing and operationalizing the techniques that have transformed the various disciplines within IT Practices over the past 5-7 years:
- Cloud Infrastructure as an on-demand Service
- Improved Security Awareness in Commercial Technology Services (even if not completely Cyber Secure yet)
- Greater selection in Application Software as a Service providing passable, basic Business Capabilities
- Agile Practices: Integrated Teams, Iterative Development, Minimum Viable Products, Ruthlessly Prioritized Features and Backlogs delivering building blocks of Working Code
- Dev/Ops Approaches to Deployments at a pace a full level of magnitude higher than the old Dev, Test, Package, and Deploy methodologies
- Re-defining “Production Release” to mean deployed into production but limiting exposure to only a subset of customers until the full functionality is validated
These practices have allowed IT Organizations to lay down their burden of “But we’re the ones that will be responsible for maintaining things” once the “Shadow IT Vendor” moves on. In fact, it has allowed IT Organizations to be far more responsive to the business needs of their respective organizations.
Should you find yourself wanting to dramatically increase the pace with which your IT Organization delivers impactful, new Business Capabilities, contact us at Bayside Associates.