CIO's Digital Dilemma: How to Run A Bimodal IT
The biggest challenge for IT leaders is about how to strike the right balance to leverage both speeds: the industrial speed and the digital speed.
More and more IT organizations are at the journey of digital transformation. However, such radical shift cannot be done overnight. Especially for those legacy companies and industries, digital movement needs to have thoughtful planning and well balance of two speeds: the industrial speed to keep the business light on, and the digital speed to adopt the new sets of minds, the latest technologies and proven methodologies for acceleration. To put simply, there are multiple perspectives for running a bimodal IT:
Stability & Agility: From IT management perspective, bimodal IT intends to manage two separate, but coherent IT delivery modes: One focuses on stability to “keep the lights on,” the fundamental IT responsibility to support business and serve internal customers. However, such mode limits IT potential and even drag down the overall business speed. Hence, with the emerging digital technology trends such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud), many IT organizations now explore the second mode -running faster, modular, nimble and resilient IT with digital speed, to focus on IT agility -the IT capability and capacity to adapt to the changes.
Agile & Waterfall: From IT project management perspective, Agile is well adopted as a major philosophy and methodology to run IT projects in many IT organizations now. Agile is a great approach with three “I” digital characteristics: Interaction, Iteration and Improvement. If there is a lot of change and discovery during execution, Agile/Scrum will serve you better than re-planning with traditional Waterfall. But for years and years, the “Waterfall” methodology is doing fine for certain projects with less changes. So there really is no such thing as one size fits all - being able to tailor the methodology to the goal will help create better outcomes.
Cloud & On-Premise IT Service: From IT service management perspective, Cloud brings unprecedented opportunity for IT to speed up and improve IT agility. However, it takes strategic planning to push the cloud envelop step by step. In quite long period of time, IT organizations will have to keep both models: the on-premise models to keep IT stable and reliable; and the hybrid cloud model to take the path for IT growth and expansion, and cloud shift focuses on what's differentiating to the business, the "what" value of IT services rather than "how" to do it. So it makes sense that business are constantly seeking new flexible tools that totally exceeds what the available arms and legs can provide.
Innovation & Process: From innovation perspective: IT mantra is shifting from “doing more with less,” to “doing more with innovation.” However, running an innovative IT doesn't mean IT will go “wild,” or "rogue"; more about IT should go smarter and flexible; it doesn't mean IT should get rid of all those processes or IT framework hassles. In fact, creativity and process have to go hand in hand; without process there is chaos and from chaos it’s hard to be creative. Using both modes-creativity and IT framework to be successful; that could sound like a contraction. But actually you need to run IT with two modes: the systematic approach with IT framework to achieve the benefits of industrializing certain domains of activity such as Service management, Infrastructure management etc. The concepts of framework are good, but they are often implemented in a bureaucratic manner with a focus on processes and not execution. So you even need more creativity - the innovative mode to provide agile and flexible products and service, and build up competitive uniqueness for business to compete in long term.
Bimodal IT is a way with sets of practices for IT leaders to meet the demands of digital business. However the biggest challenge is about how to strike the right balance to leverage both speeds, the industrial speed to keep IT stable and efficient, and the digital speed to expediting IT agility and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
More and more IT organizations are at the journey of digital transformation. However, such radical shift cannot be done overnight. Especially for those legacy companies and industries, digital movement needs to have thoughtful planning and well balance of two speeds: the industrial speed to keep the business light on, and the digital speed to adopt the new sets of minds, the latest technologies and proven methodologies for acceleration. To put simply, there are multiple perspectives for running a bimodal IT:
Stability & Agility: From IT management perspective, bimodal IT intends to manage two separate, but coherent IT delivery modes: One focuses on stability to “keep the lights on,” the fundamental IT responsibility to support business and serve internal customers. However, such mode limits IT potential and even drag down the overall business speed. Hence, with the emerging digital technology trends such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud), many IT organizations now explore the second mode -running faster, modular, nimble and resilient IT with digital speed, to focus on IT agility -the IT capability and capacity to adapt to the changes.
Agile & Waterfall: From IT project management perspective, Agile is well adopted as a major philosophy and methodology to run IT projects in many IT organizations now. Agile is a great approach with three “I” digital characteristics: Interaction, Iteration and Improvement. If there is a lot of change and discovery during execution, Agile/Scrum will serve you better than re-planning with traditional Waterfall. But for years and years, the “Waterfall” methodology is doing fine for certain projects with less changes. So there really is no such thing as one size fits all - being able to tailor the methodology to the goal will help create better outcomes.
Cloud & On-Premise IT Service: From IT service management perspective, Cloud brings unprecedented opportunity for IT to speed up and improve IT agility. However, it takes strategic planning to push the cloud envelop step by step. In quite long period of time, IT organizations will have to keep both models: the on-premise models to keep IT stable and reliable; and the hybrid cloud model to take the path for IT growth and expansion, and cloud shift focuses on what's differentiating to the business, the "what" value of IT services rather than "how" to do it. So it makes sense that business are constantly seeking new flexible tools that totally exceeds what the available arms and legs can provide.
Innovation & Process: From innovation perspective: IT mantra is shifting from “doing more with less,” to “doing more with innovation.” However, running an innovative IT doesn't mean IT will go “wild,” or "rogue"; more about IT should go smarter and flexible; it doesn't mean IT should get rid of all those processes or IT framework hassles. In fact, creativity and process have to go hand in hand; without process there is chaos and from chaos it’s hard to be creative. Using both modes-creativity and IT framework to be successful; that could sound like a contraction. But actually you need to run IT with two modes: the systematic approach with IT framework to achieve the benefits of industrializing certain domains of activity such as Service management, Infrastructure management etc. The concepts of framework are good, but they are often implemented in a bureaucratic manner with a focus on processes and not execution. So you even need more creativity - the innovative mode to provide agile and flexible products and service, and build up competitive uniqueness for business to compete in long term.
Bimodal IT is a way with sets of practices for IT leaders to meet the demands of digital business. However the biggest challenge is about how to strike the right balance to leverage both speeds, the industrial speed to keep IT stable and efficient, and the digital speed to expediting IT agility and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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