About the MODERN organization of Real World processes in the IT (companies)
I am appalled on my day to day work by how antediluvian the so called “IT Processes” are in (most) modern “IT Companies”…
The feeling that I have is that they stem from absolute mediocrity at all levels (although there are some very bright and talented people), where the leading figure of “quality” are numbers & pie charts, managed by people that, for the most part, don’t have a clue about what REALLY is “IT”.
For them it could be the same as selling shoes. They only take care of numbers, and try to adjust expenses to increase their margins of profitability.
But everyone should know that mediocrity can only erode profitability in the short term, and completely destroy the brand image in the long run.
That kind of business strategy does pay off rather badly, by impacting the customer’s perceived brand quality, and his trust in it.
As it is set now, the majority of big IT players are reactive instead of proactive. They invest as little as possible in AVOIDING issues because it seems to be more expensive to those that do the beautiful pie charts & numbers, in their gorgeous PowerPoint presentations, to wow higher management that are only interested in numbers.
Shouldn’t “IT” be about having everything under control, and fixing issues before they even manifest themselves? It’s not like we are inventing something new or asking for a miracle!
There are processes & tech in place like “LoadBalancing” and “Redundancy”, but they do cost money, and also need some REAL professional experts (that cost REAL money).
Having the tech in place is only half the picture. You need real professionals that can take care of managing and configuring that tech to perform as it was conceived. (You could spend a fortune on the best tech, but then put a monkey to manage it, and the outcome would be “bananas”).
I think IT should also simplify and abstract the complexities, so normal people won’t need to know about all this, just like the iPhone spearheaded the revolution in smart-phones, anyone could use it without the need for a background in IT.
We are living in a connected, hectic & interactive world, but the tools & interfaces are rather outdated for the sudden overload of information.
To me there’s no intelligence in the way information is presented, ie, I want the “system” to present me with information I care about, in the moment I want it, and even anticipate it before I even think I need it (right now it is invasive to my daily work-flow; it needs to BLEND in my work-flow, seemingly!).
Of course that system should know me very well, like if we were a couple (yes I know, funny! xD), even intimate knowledge.
With the current computing power of our mobile phones and their myriad of sensors, they (smart-phones) can accumulate a great deal of specific information about ourselves (yes it could be used for evil things)…after all they tend to spend a huge amount of time with us 😉
I think we could use that very powerful tool to accumulate a “Virtual Knowledge Avatar”, and have it always with us, just like when you dock your smart-phone to listen to music, you could “dock” it to the receiving computer/system so “it” (smart-phone) can take over that system and personalise it… you VKA always with you, a kind of virtual replica of you, in a way, that would take over and “manage” that system, while using all of the host’s computing power and resources (a kind of intermediate interface between humans and machines…for the time being of course!).
In the end, I think we need better intelligence, and simplify (to the essence) the current processes.
What do you think? Do you relate?
Hi Carlos,
I agree with you and what is very sad is that all you are saying is applicable to many countries if not all. Reduce cost, reduce investment, a lot of mediocrity in all political levels. How come otherwise, that what is know as the best option for a country to improve its status and be able to cope with crisis like the one we have is totally neglected in countries like mine, Spain?
How come that the budget for Research and Development has been so dramatically cut, forcing so many prepared people to look for opportunities in other lands. How come so much money can be spent in silly things but not in facing and resolving the real problems we have? Both, countries and IT companies are failing in having efficient and effective processes and some times, in both cases, the solutions applied are just work arounds or patched that do not attack the root of the issues.
I had a long reply and the “system” decided to bug out and loose everything… grrr… should have known better!!!
Will reply again shortly, … I hope!
Hey again David!
First of all thank you for the time you took to reply here, I really appreciate it! 🙂
I think it all stems from the social (stratified) human behaviour, where knowingly or not, we live in a pyramid style society.
Most of the time, the people on top are not there because they are old wise men or women that have vast experience and are the best among their peers, but rather the contrary, because they might have social & people skills, or … by other means.
I also think very few people can be experts on everything, so, the natural way to proceed is to delegate.
This is where the chain of command comes into place, and we can have a very clear example in the military structure; “If I say jump, you say how high!”
The core of everything, I think, is to analyze the motivation that drives Mr.X to do whatever he is doing.
Is it money? … is it power? …is it social recognition among his peers? or maybe Mr. X doesn’t care about all that, and his motivation is different…?
Now, politics is a very old art, and we could spend countless hours talking about that, and trying to analyze why… but in reality, as with an algorithm, you can’t solve all those questions, if you don’t have all the data.
We as human thinking machines, use a lot of heuristics and inference to try and “guess”, with our limited information, what could be the most probable cause of the problem at hand to solve…
And, here I am drifting into another realm… 😉