Too many IT projects are successful by their own account, yet are not adopted after
implementation. Though each may be well designed and implemented, very often the
final product is not considered a success. To understand why this happens – and
to remedy this expensive situation – it is necessary to see beyond the borders of
traditional thinking and ask, “Where is the business value?”
Even in an ever-changing business environment there are three things we can do to
ensure that IT solutions always exceed expectations by adding business value. First,
we must look beyond traditional thinking in order to uncover the underlying challenge
or need behind the project. Second, we must foster true collaboration. Third, we
must put people first and improve their communication.
By now you’ve probably heard of Siri, the new iPhone’s cloud-based, voice-activated
personal assistant. Siri can check your calendar in the morning, find you the latest
hot spot for lunch, and help you avoid traffic on the commute home. As Apple puts
it: “Your wish is its command.” Like many modern day apps, Siri operates in the
Cloud. But there’s a twist. With Siri, developers and engineers are monitoring your
every request, in a quest to make Siri smarter and more effective based on how people
are using it in real life.
To those resistant to the lure of the Cloud, this does not help its case. A relatively
new phenomenon, the public Cloud is still maturing, still on the expensive side,
and still liable to carry more risk in terms of longer response times and server
crashes. It’s also less private, and if your users didn’t know it before, the example
of Siri will leave no doubt. Already uncomfortable knowing their movements can be
tracked and their accounts can be hacked, how will your users feel knowing their
calendar and other personal information can be so easily watched from the Public
cloud?
With any new project, if you’re not solving user or business needs, why bother?
If you are solving user or business needs but don’t know it and can’t measure it,
what’s the point?
Companies feel pressured – as they should – to engage with their audiences using
the devices and platforms those users keep at their sides at all times: smartphones,
iPads, Facebook, Twitter… and the list expands relentlessly (want to join my circles
in Google+?).
A recent Dell KACE survey of 750 IT professionals found that a majority of employees
are using personal devices to log in to corporate systems, yet 87 percent of respondents
also say that their companies are unable to protect corporate resources and data
from being accessed or stored on those devices. More than 60% believe the companies
they work for are not adequately prepared for the flood of personal devices now
entering the workplace.
Mobile devices have taken the world by storm. They have gone from being a disruptive
technology to becoming a way of life to the new generation. What I call the members
of “Gen C” – the “Connected” Generation – will enter the workforce in even greater
numbers over the next few years.
More data was generated by individuals in 2009 than in the entire history of mankind
through 2008, according to Andreas Weigend, the former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com
and an expert in data mining and computational marketing.
And that was nearly three years ago. Since then, big data has only gotten bigger.
The McKinsey Global Institute offers these numbers to show the predicted growth
of data compared to the predicted growth of the capability of handling all that
data: 40 percent projected growth in global data generated per year versus just
5 percent growth in global IT spending.
The Consumerization of IT Requires CIOs to Step it Up
Social sites like Facebook and mobile technology like the iPad have turned the employees
you serve into uber-consumers of technology. Their expectations are sky-high. Literally.
In this hilarious video, comedian Louis CK offers a glimpse into our sense
of technology entitlement. At about two minutes into the video, he reports being
on an airplane that offers high-speed Internet – the newest technological advancement
that he knows exists.
But, inevitably, this new technology malfunctions. Instead of marveling at what‘s
possible, the guy next to him on the plane expresses his displeasure at losing his
mile-high wi-fi, saying: “This is bulls**t.” As Louis CK observes: “How quickly
the world owes him something that he knew existed only 10 seconds ago.”
