In the 1970s, a psychologist named Noel Burch cre-
ated a learning model to describe how humans go
through four stages of learning when introduced to a
new skill. This model is known as The Four Stages of
Competence. organizations mature as they progress through the
learning curve.
Wikipedia does a good job of providing the following
high level summary of the model: At the unconscious incompetence stage, the lack of
knowledge of the underlying technology, organiza-
tional impact, and potential business value causes
organizations to deny the usefulness of cloud com-
puting. Some call it resistance to change, but it is
really a lack of understanding of the core value prop-
osition. Organizations in this stage dispute the bene-
fits of cloud and use things like security, compliance,
and outages as justification for continuing to run IT
with a legacy data center mentality.
1. Unconscious Incompetence
The individual does not understand or know how to
do something and does not necessarily recognize the
deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The
individual must recognize their own incompetence,
and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the
next stage. The length of time an individual spends in
this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to
learn.
2. Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know
how to do something, he or she does recognize the
deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing
the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to
the learning process at this stage.
3. Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do
something. However, demonstrating the skill or
knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken
down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involve-
ment in executing the new skill.
4. Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill
that it has become “second nature” and can be per-
formed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed
while executing another task. The individual may be
able to teach it to others, depending upon how and
when it was learned.
This model has many parallels to how I see large
organizations adapt to cloud computing. The follow-
ing stages of cloud adoption are not based on scien-
tific analysis or modeling, but rather how I have seen
Applying the Model to Cloud
Stage 1: Cloud Denial
Stage 2: Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Cloud
At the conscious incompetence stage, many either
see tangible value in the cloud or have a mandate
from the C-suite to go cloud. However, these organi-
zations don’t necessarily trust cloud providers, espe-
cially public cloud vendors, and they continue to
apply their legacy data center thinking to the cloud
architectures that they build. They also still want to
be in control because they think that the cloud is only
safe if they build it themselves. A lot of blood, sweat,
tears and money is shed over the next year or two but
the business value is rarely achieved at the levels that
were anticipated. These organizations are turning
their companies into infrastructure companies,
instead of turning them into software companies.
Stage 3: Cloud Transformation
Those at the conscious competence stage have a year
or two of hands on experience with the cloud and a
solid understanding of IaaS. At this point, most orga-
nizations realize the DIY model is complex and time
consuming.
Now that those driving the change understand the
underlying technologies, the organizational impacts,
and the potential business value, they often start
looking for ways to accelerate their cloud adoption
programs. This is where companies who previously
said “we will never go to the public cloud” change
their mindset to “tell me what I can’t run in the public
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