The Modern-Day Dead Poets Society: Technology & Process Delivered Good, Fast, Cheap
The birth of a new technology or methodology doesn’t have to mean the death of another. There’s enough room and value proposition that makes them each viable beyond co-existence, and quite possibly even complimenting each other in a way they’ve never been before.

In a wolf cave in Delaware, the pages of ITIL books are being gently turned as process and procedure guides are discussed by candle-light while the modern-day “Dead Poet’s Society” braces for a possible prolonged shift back to the underground. It hasn't been that long since ITIL ghouls surfaced and began to live among their information technology cousins or may have become equally privileged. There are several innovative trends that have the potential to derail an organization’s ITIL in-roads if they’re applied with such intent, and that is the foundation by which I surmise ITIL has always been under threat. 

 

Arguably, there’s been a long-standing notion that control measures, processes, procedures, and people prolong delivery. Technology advancements have re-defined consumer expectations and subsequently so too the “New York minute”. We want things faster, better, cheaper, and did I mention faster? Of course, if we wrap end-to-end process around the delivery of a solution or product, is it even possible to deliver it while meeting the expectations of whatever has been defined as the customer experience, or perhaps the customer experience is being used to drive back those ITIL people who have simply been in the way this entire time? Influencing that time to market is also the notion that operations and programmers have found a new way to work together (DevOps). Granted, while there are legitimate elements of technology strategies to support it, DevOps has historically seemed more organic to me, however as I welcome this shift, I can’t help but think it also presents an opportunity for some to suggest that it requires a shift away from proven ITIL processes.

 

A professor once told me, “think of development and delivery as a triangle. On one side you have ‘fast’, on another ‘cheap’, and on the last one ‘good’. Pick two because you can never have all three.” As I fast-forward several years, is that really what consumers want today, and is that exactly what technology can now deliver? The challenge to overcome, is understanding what ingredients exactly go into the selection of each of those sides. The right level of process and procedures helps make things good, and the right level of “DevOps” helps makes things fast, and the combined efficiency between process and delivery (knowing how much to use and when, in a way that is repeatable) helps reduce the cost. Ultimately, those things will all contribute to the customer experience which goes beyond the time and cost of a solution or product.

 

The birth of a new technology or methodology doesn’t have to mean the death of another. There’s enough room and value proposition that makes them each viable beyond co-existence, and quite possibly even complimenting each other in a way they’ve never been before. The easy thing to do is kill off the procedures that have cost millions to develop and implement. The smart thing to do is to take advantage of all that work by evolving it to help drive a safety net of efficiency.

 

I reminisce this by candlelight, in my cave. 

 

This is an opinion article by Guido Piraino of  The Monthly Social Podcast. It may also be heard on The Path Radio Mix Online. You can read other opinion articles on the blog page.

 

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