Categories
Business Technology

IT vs Business

Who’s gonna win?

Judging from the insights that are developing, not only within myself, but also from more prominent journalism, i would say business will eventually catch onto how IT’s supposed to be managed and augmented into adding value to the core focus of the business. Obviously, IT-centric business will be oh so slightly different. But the point is, if you’re a developer (as an example), you should be thinking of how to join the company, not the development team. Your approach and your skill-set should be centered on supporting the core business and not just how good you are at coding. This is a marked difference, and while some have been getting it right, it won’t take long before everyone is forced to get it right. Again, IT-centric (or technologically oriented) organisations will have their subtle differences.

What does that mean in the short term? Don’t think of business as ‘them’. It’s ‘us’. And there’s also no ‘us’ when it comes to the dev team. The ‘us’ is the company.

How do you identify with the change? Well, think of the any other division within your organisation. Accounts, procurement, call-center; any of them, all of them, see themselves as the business or aiding the business directly. They don’t have this distinction (by and large) of ‘there’s us’ and then ‘there’s the business’. It’s the same thing.

Getting this mindshift entrenched as part and parcel of IT as being within the company and not external to the company will certainly be a much needed move forward. The technological advances (again, programming wise) are not that radical; the improvements do need to come from another aspect, and this change looks to be it.

Categories
Business Rants Technology

IT “Industry”

I say “industry” but there’s no real regulation put in by the government (at least here) which keeps the industry in check. For one, it’s not illegal to provide IT services or build software without a licence, while in more established industries, it is illegal to, for example, provide medical, financial, engineering or manufacturing services (where people’s lives are at risk) without a licence. Anyway, that’s not a formal classification or rule, just an idea that appeals to me. Why the necessity to make the distinction?

Over the last decade of building software, i’ve seen a fair share of hair-brained ideas. I’ve also seen some brilliant ones. What i haven’t seen much of though, is brilliant management. I’ve seen some, but these generally come from the business-oriented bunch who just happen to end up in IT; very rarely from tech-savvy management trying to keep a business going. In fact, most of the time, tech-savvy management who try to run their business without business-focused partners end up either working way too much overtime (work = life =work) or going belly up. Somehow, there exists this hype perpetuated by punctuated newsworthy stories of geeks-in-a-garage-cashing-in. So if they can do it, why can’t we? ‘Cos not every story turns out that way.

And particularly software. Manufacturing, distribution or sales, whether it’s IT or food, is the same thing, mostly. That is, the science and art of management has been established and the discipline is well understood. Software, on the other hand, doesn’t fit the mould. Yes, it’s plain manufacturing, distributing and selling, but therein lies the rub. You approach it with business fundamentals, and it works, but if you don’t adapt some of those implementations; you get left behind- and quickly. You toss out the fundamentals in order to keep up; you get dropped behind- even quicker.

As an example, my last company just liquidated. There are lots of different stories as to why, how, when, where or who. Bottom line, no more business. I can only comment on the software aspect; not the rest of the operation. So the only thing i do know is that it was very tricky getting the software strategy just right. Everyone pushed and pulled and chewed on this one all the time trying to get it to work. Maybe, with a little more time, it could have worked out ok in the end? Next time 🙂

More evidence supporting the notion that “software is hard”. And it makes me wonder how different things would be if you had to be officially licenced/qualified, by law, to operate in providing a software writing service. Not a fly-by-night programming course. Not a dummy’s guide to programming. Something professionally trustworthy and legally accountable. I wonder just how far would that go towards stabilising the “industry”? Make it more reputable and have governing bodies presiding over fair exchange between vendors and clients; also ultimately curbing the number of software businesses that just don’t make it.

Neh. Where would we be without the hype? It’s part of the magic of this little world 😉

Categories
Life

BSc. Year One

Study unit

Description

Mark

Result

  APM113U APPLIED LINEAR ALGEBRA 91 Passed
  MAT103N LINEAR ALGEBRA 75 Passed
  MAT110M PRECALCULUS MATHEMATICS 68 Passed
  MAT111N PRECALCULUS MATHEMATICS B 70 Passed
  MAT112P CALCULUS A 59 Passed
  MAT113Q CALCULUS B 58 Passed
  STS1055 BASIC STATISTICS 56 Passed
Categories
Life

RIP Louis

Goodbye, SuperLoo. You are sadly missed 🙁

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