#eavoices

The New IT Reality Demands a Participative Workforce

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Last week my report “Field Research Summary: The Changing IT Career” was published on Gartner.com. This report summarizes the findings from our field research project focused on how goals, expectations and trends are affecting IT careers from the practitioner’s point of view. This field research incorporated both a Gartner Research Circle survey and in-depth interviews […]

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Top Technology Trends and CIO Priorities for 2013

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I have been regularly writing about emerging Information Technology trends on this blog. The CIO priorities for future are often linked to these trends but they also do influence the Information Technology trends in return. Gartner who is at the forefront of research in this space has recently released their research report outlining their top 10 strategic technology trends for 2013. The complete report can be accessed here but a brief summary of this research along with my own summary comments are as follows:
  1. Mobile Devices Battles – Windows 8 is here. Is your organisation going to deploy it? If yes, what will be the impact on your BYOD policy. Windows 8 tablets and smartphones will gain in prominence. What does this mean for your iOS and Android support model?
  2. Mobile Apps and HTML 5 –  Mobile app and web technologies are fast maturing and are influencing native application development too. How will you manage the hybrid web / native development frameworks?
  3. Personal Cloud – Online applications and services are transforming consumer technology. How will this effect your organisation? Windows 8 with Skydrive is an example of this trend.
  4. The Internet of Things – Becoming more mainstream now. What innovative business models will you create in next three years to benefit from IoT?
  5. Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing – As Cloud Computing evolves and matures new business and operating models are emerging. IT departments of large oranisations will be expected to act as service brokers in such hybrid models.
  6. Strategic Bid Data – Big Data has become a major driver of IT spending recently but going forward the trend will be to integrate this better with Data warehouses and Data Integration Infrastructure
  7. Actionable Analytics – Business needs real-time decision making and forward looking analytics. How can you embed this in real time applications?  
  8. Mainstream In-Memory Computing – How will In-Memory Computing disrupt the application architectures and how will your manage the operating and data governance requirements?  
  9. Integrated Platforms and Ecosystems – How do you balance vendor lock-in with benefits of integrated platforms?
  10. Enterprise APP Stores – The success of consumer App stores will drive organisation’s own enterprise App stores but this needs to balanced with security and support concerns.
Deloitte has been a recent welcome entrant in the Technology Trend publishing business with it releasing its fourth annual technology trend report recently. The folks at Deloitte have taken an interesting approach to this as they have grouped trends in two classifications or categories:  “Disruptors” are opportunities that can create sustainable positive disruption in IT capabilities, business operations, and sometimes even business models. “Enablers” are technologies in which many CIOs have already invested time and effort, but which warrant another look because of new developments or opportunities. Deloitte lists trends such as Influence of Mobility, Social, Analytics, Cloud as Disruptors while listing as Gamification, Refocussing on ERP and Security focus as Enablers. 

In one of my previous blog posts I had written about five forces shaping the CIO agenda. Very briefly, they were listed as, Business Services, Application Services, Cloud Computing, Consumerisation of Technology and Business Analytics. If above published 2013 trend research is taken into account then I would like to redefine them as follows:

  1. Evolution of Cloud Computing – Private, Public, Hybrid, Community, Personal
  2. Consumerisation of Technology – Windows 8, Tablet, Smart phone adaption
  3. Mainstream nature of Data Analytics – Big Data coming to Data Warehousing 
  4. Proliferation of Web APPs – Enterprise APP stores on the line of Mobile APP Stores
  5. Increasing Integration of Platforms – e.g. Rise of Appliances such as EXADATA
I think that the business and application services are slowly merging into the APP Store philosophy while the business analytics has gone mainstream since 2011. Cloud and increasing integration of platforms is a trend which has matured since past few years and is probably going to get through further rounds of evolution in coming years. It is interesting that no one is yet talking about explicit influence of Social as much as any of above trends. 

From information architecture to evidence-based practice

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@bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”

Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.

  • a simple infrastructure that supports evidence-based practice
  • teachers should be empowered to participate in research
  • the results of research should be disseminated more efficiently
  • resources on research should be available to teachers, enabling them to be critical and thoughtful consumers of evidence
  • barriers between teachers and researchers should be removed
  • teachers should be driving the research agenda, by identifying questions that need to be answered.

Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.

to be continued …

Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)

Why information architecture needs systems thinking

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If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves … There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

Source: Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974

We who labor at the crossroads of structure and behavior have learned the hard way that content management is far messier than garbage collection and “the system always kicks back.”

Source: Peter Morville, Editorial: The System of Information Architecture (Journal of Information Architecture. Vol. 3, No. 2., 2012) 

Churchman’s interest in computing reaches extensively beyond the metaphor of inquiring systems. He addresses many issues with the state of MIS research of his time, including the tendency of IS researchers to focus on “safe” issues such as “structure of files, retrieval techniques, automatic abstracting, and the like” (Churchman 1968, p.111). He indicates that the majority of such research is not consistent with the systems approach as it focuses on transactions rather than the true goals or benefit of the system. Churchman is also quite visionary as he predicts the ubiquitous role of computers in everyday life. With the ability to “find facts” readily, Churchman predicted that information systems will actually work to reinforce a user’s Weltanschauung (world-view), as the user would screen information based on his Weltanschauung. In order to expand use MIS to expand the user’s view to one that is more holistic, Churchman envisioned a “deadly enemy” proposal for the design of an information system. The main role of this deadly enemy is for the system to propose information results based on assumptions that are opposite of the user’s information request, thereby revealing to the user his fundamental assumptions and at the same time questioning them (Churchman 1968, p. 122-123).

Source: Nicholas Berente, C West Churchman: Champion of the Systems Approach quoting Churchman, C.W. (1968) The Systems Approach, Dell Publishing Co.

See also Kristo Ivanov, The systems approach to design, and inquiring information systems (2001)

We Ought to Know the Difference

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Is systems thinking really possible? Here’s one reason why it might not be.

One of the concerns of systems thinking is the need to avoid the so-called environmental fallacy – the blunder of ignoring or not understanding the effects of the environment of a system. This is why, when systems thinkers are asked to tackle a concrete situation in detail, they often hesitate, insisting that it is wrong to look at the detail before understanding the context.

The trouble with this is that there is always a larger context, so this hesitation leads to an infinite regress and inability to formulate practical inroads into a complex situation. Many years ago, I read a brilliant essay by J.P. Eberhard called “We Ought to Know the Difference”, which contains a widely quoted example of a doorknob. As I recall, Eberhard’s central question is a practical one – how do we know when to expand the scope of the problem, and how do we know when to stop.

C West Churchman went more deeply into this question. In his book The Systems Approach and its Enemies (1979), he presents an ironic picture of the systems thinker as hero.

If the intellect is to engage in the heroic adventure of securing improvement in the human condition, it cannot rely on “approaches,” like politics and morality, which attempt to tackle problems head-on, within the narrow scope. Attempts to address problems in such a manner simply lead to other problems, to an amplification of difficulty away from real improvement. Thus the key to success in the hero’s attempt seems to be comprehensiveness. Never allow the temptation to be clear, or to use reliable data, or to “come up to the standards of excellence,” divert you from the relevant, even though the relevant may be elusive, weakly supported by data, and requiring loose methods.

Like Eberhard, Churchman seeks to reconcile the heroic stance of the systems thinker with the practical stance of other approaches. But we ought to know the difference.

This is an extract from my eBook on Next Practice Enterprise Architecture. Draft available from LeanPub.

John P. Eberhard, “We Ought to Know the Difference,” Emerging Methods in Environmental Design and Planning, Gary T. Moore, ed. (MIT Press, 1970) pp 364-365

See extract here – The Warning of the Doorknob. The same extract can be found in many places, including Ed Yourdon’s Modern Structured Analysis (first published 1989).

See also

Nicholas Berente, C West Churchman: Champion of the Systems Approach

Jeff Lindsay, Avoiding environmental fallacy with systems thinking (December 2012)

Updated May 14 2013

Power, Process, Project, People – The Effect

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Finally I find the time to write another post and continue my series about Power, Project, Process and People. As a small summary here a oneliner about each of the three forces:

  • Power is about control and authority which limits people.
  • Process is about faster, higher and stronger which spins people faster. 
  • Project is about moving which changes people.

All three forces together can have a quite severe impact on on people. Literally they force people to change faster and faster while limiting them.

 


So what is the chances to escape? Actually there is three typical ways to escape for each individual person:

  • Increase the power by climbing the hierarchy.
  • Forcing others to spin faster, higher and stronger by becoming process owner.
  • Forcing others to change by executing projects.

The easiest way to escape lies in executing projects, be it as internal or as external. Being good at project execution protects people against being forced to change themselves, because the methodology on how the project was executed can be used again and again and again without adapting much. Furthermore if implementing a specific solution that very same solution with small adaptions can also be implemented many times in a row allowing to not change while those who are affected by the project must change.

Being really strong in one methodology sometimes opens up for the chance to become process owner, which is great, because it allows to let other people spin faster (and higher and stronger), while the own speed more or less remains the same (except if the process owner of process management really makes process managers spin faster).

Rising in the hierarchy is the option in which typically the people are interested most. First of all it is the option which has the highest chance to increase income significant. And it is (and makes) attractive, because it gives direct power over others.

The interesting (and potentially relevant) observation I make in most cases is that one who is advancing either in Project, Process or Power terms is normally picking up the behaviour of who was leading him in respect to that particular force. It takes some time to free up and leave the old approaches behind and actually many who are in the position to control one of the forces never advance.