The IT industry is younger than its peers including good friends Finance and Health, but has undergone seismic shifts in what it delivers and how during its short life. The time that products and services take to move through life cycle changes from conception, development, maturity to retirement is increasingly short. Other industries have seized the opportunities that technology offers and have been disrupted, but technology is relatively unique in that it continually disrupts itself in an almost cannibalistic fashion.
Bitcoin and blockchain are challenging financial and contractual models, IT infrastructure and data mining has transformed the health sector. Technologists are a bit like health professionals with the specialists, paramedics and pharmacists (aka infrastructure managers, service managers and risk managers) seeming to be in an uneasy truce with myotherapists, kinesiologists and naturopaths (perhaps start-ups, SaaS providers and Apple?).
But does this mean that we should be abandoning the skills that made us, and our clients, successful in the past? Should we be tossing out all platforms and applications that aren’t cloud based, disregarding processes that aren’t digital and letting waterfall drown in its own paperwork? Again, I don’t think so.
Philosophical wars between old and new methodologies (waterfall vs agile), capability suites (digital vs service management) and job titles (Digital vs Technology) do service to neither and frequently drive disparate and duplicated pools of effort. All approaches are needed, but if they are to achieve their
maximum effectiveness and efficiency they must be applied in harmony with respect for what each has to offer and awareness of the limitations or consequences that they bring to the table.
For Service Management professionals, this entails making a conscious decision to drive continuous improvement across all parts of the service delivery chain, from underlying technology to the customer experience. Technology creates the art of the opportunity and incremental change should bring, as a minimum, incremental benefit.
I don’t know of one business leader or owner who is not expected to continually seek out competitive advantage or greater efficiency, regardless of whether they operate in the commercial, government or not-for-profit sectors and Service Management professionals are key in supporting this demand.
5
Business Agility; because a mechanistic organisation cannot exist within a chaotic marketplace