In Part 1 of this topic I talked about the past. How the 1st revolution of IT occurred as empowered line of business workers took control of their data and analysis because their PCs and office software allowed them more flexibility, agility and speed than they’d seen from their centralized IT shops.
The path was set, which is why Chris Anderson uses the phrase "just one step above Building Maintenance" to describe CIOs today.
The 2nd revolution is headed our way, and it is all about access to information and the ability of knowledge workers to integrate and operate on that information on their own.
Think about mashups. Today they’re like a not very user friendly spreadsheet program. (Look at the first VisiCalc screen.) But they’ll become as easy and ubiquitous as Excel very quickly.
So here we go again. After all, 26 years after the PC, line of business managers are still impatient with the agility and speed of application development and deployment out of the IT shop. In this 2nd revolution, there’ll be more power for the knowledge worker to build the ad hoc mashup needed to improve the productivity, effectiveness, or enjoyment of her task.
With this, more pressure on IT to support the new paradigm even as they paint themselves into the box of less relevance and more commodity provider. Building maintenance indeed.
The prepared IT teams will get ahead of this curve. They’ll embrace Info 2.0, seeing it as a way to outsource some of their app development to their own internal clients. The knowledge worker knows her business process better than most anyone else – why not let her be the developer of choice?
Most importantly: prepared software teams will figure out who their stakeholders really are, and precisely what is needed to help those folks succeed in their roles.
How about the unprepared teams? They’ll confirm their (poor) position in the business hierarchy of under performing firms, and lose their heads in high performing firms. Don’t underestimate the impact that well designed software can have on transforming a business.
(Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=370951443&size=m; by urban_data)
1 comments:
I totally agree with this. I think from the business side to, there will be a push to embrace these technologies, like Info 2.0, because of the need that they have to create quick apps (mashups, or situational apps) to make their job easier (by tracking their sales revenues and reps, monitoring inventory, etc).
We've already heard that potential customers have these needs, and now many are ready to embrace it.
There are a few barriers though, but with time these will work themselves out. If you want to read more on Info 2.0 and the IT/LOB side of things check out my blog at www.jroller.com/cooney.
Lauren
Lauren Cooney
IBM CTO Office
Information Management Group
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