The Valuable Gap – Identifying IT change.

Everybody knows that the IT sector is a fast paced, ever evolving field. Many professionals are curious to stay ahead by keeping up with the latest buzzwords, frameworks, and technologies. While this continuous learning is often seen as a positive trait, is it right that your organization dives in?

Dive In or Stay Dry

There have been so many technologies that appear, trend, and just as fast as it arrived, simply disappear of the face of the earth with limited support to boot! I personally have been part of a project when an architecture team selected a technology, invested in it, built upon it and then the vendor quietly abandoned it!

Motivation

As a junior member of the architectural team at that time, this experience taught me a significant lesson and raised serious questions. What was the motivation behind selecting that technology? There were alternative choices, yet the team chose this one.
Why?

I concluded that the lead architect was motivated by the desire to work with new technologies. While some large R&D companies make serious money from inventing, releasing, and evolving their own technological advancements; in general, most organizations should approach new technologies with caution.

At the time of writing, Microsoft has recently released .NET 9. This represents its latest technological advancements. However, .NET 9 has only an 18-month support window, whereas .NET 8 has a longer lifespan with a fixed end of life (EoL) date. Even more surprisingly, .NET Framework 4.8 has an "indefinite" EoL!

Go ahead, Google it… I’m not advocating not to use it, but it is an interesting fact.

What I’ve Learnt

Simply put, organizations should evolve based upon need, not for the sake of adopting the latest trend. This evolution should be strategic, grounded in facts such as system usage, growth, and performance projections, and carefully balanced with the gap between operational and organizational capabilities.

Understanding your current IT Landscape and aligning it with your organization's long term aspirations is crucial. By assessing the "Valuable Gap," organizations can make informed decisions with stakeholders on how best to bridge that gap.

How to Establish the Valuable Gap

The easiest way to identify gaps in your organization is to first understand what you have. Evaluate from the user’s perspective how well the current system fulfils its intended purpose.

Next, align with your organization's strategic vision. Start from the highest level possible (ideally at the board level) and work your way down. Build a capability model and assess how well your organization meets its objectives.

Low and behold, out creeps the gaps; gaps that you can drive valuable change from.

But don’t dive in just yet, perform a cost benefit analysis to ensure you deliver the most value with the resource capacity and budget constraints you inevitably have.

Now you can Dive In.

Capability Modelling Example from The Enterprise Modelling App