How to prepare for the next revolution in IT (Part 1)

Do you remember way back in history when the PC first took hold in businesses, and regular people (i.e., non computer types) used Lotus 123 or VisiCalc to build their own data analyses and reporting?

Before then, if you wanted a new report you’d ask the IT folks, who might deign to deliver it in two or three or more months. Back then there were trips to the output bin to get a report that often lead you to realize you needed to rerun the report because the data wasn’t quite right. PC’s and office applications changed all that.

That was the first revolution.

End users grabbed their data, stopped waiting for long turnaround times from IT, and did their own thing.

The power of the centralized IT organization dissipated like air from a leaky tire. Lines of business began their own, decentralized approaches to information and computation. Meanwhile, departmental workstation hardware improved in capability and price point. New software emerged, from vendors and regional business partners. Sure, IT ran the tough old stuff, but much of the work moved to departments.

This is a great example of how “software” can change the way work is performed in businesses. Especially when the approach separates the goal of the business from the folks working in the business. The initial goal of Lotus 123 wasn’t to make the IT organization more productive. It did end up eliminating some of the demands on the IT organization, and creating new demands as well.

Yes, the CIOs have recovered a bit in the intervening 20+ years. But it will never be the same: now, worrying about federating or supporting or just interoperating with departmental line of business systems is de rigueur.

And yet, just when things at least seem stable (if not happy), here it comes again. The next revolution. I’ll say more about this in Part 2.

(Image attribution: http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=551537629&size=s; by jonsson)

Introducing the outside-in thinking blog

Welcome to the outside-in thinking blog. The name comes from a way of thinking about software development – about who all the stakeholders of a project are, and how to understand and factor their real business needs into a development project. John Sweitzer and I just wrote a book on the topic – really a composite of successful practices we’ve seen in our jobs over the past many years.

The ideas covered in Outside-in Software Development apply to both vendor software projects and to in-house application development. I’ll try to draw connections to both since most of the businesses I work with have both.

The purpose of this blog is to share perspectives on outside-in thinking and how it can apply across a variety of situations. I look forward to your comments so we can stir up some discussion here as well.

(Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1035843808&size=m; by Mykl Roventine.)