In the interests of being controversial and stimulating some potentially enlightening debate, I was thinking today about “shadow IT” and their role in the world of IT organizations circa 2017.
To be clear, I’ve spent much of my consulting career helping IT organizational leaders eliminate (or at least, reduce) the scourge of the dreaded “shadow IT.” These were both a barrier to successful IT maturation (they would not get on the standard platforms, did not really know what they were doing, hijacked available IT spend/business demand that otherwise should have flowed to the “real” IT organization) and a reminder that, in some way, IT had failed, and shadow IT had surfaced as a response to our failure.
Now, as we move towards 2017, and towards Level 3 business-IT maturity, I’m re-thinking the role and nature of shadow IT. I stand by my prior positions on shadow IT – if you are trying to get through Level 1 maturity, you have to reign in shadow IT. It’s all about “getting control” so you can standardize, consolidate and rationalize. However, to get to Level 3, I think you need a reversal of position – shadow IT is good – to be encouraged and steered, rather than discouraged and eliminated. First, this is pragmatic. But more importantly, it’s about Level 3 IT having a solid Level 1 and 2 capability (basic platform for Level 1, and transactional platform for Level 2), on top of which the business can innovate – requiring business-embedded IT capability – i.e., shadow IT. At this stage, shadow IT is not an admission of IT’s failure – it is a recognition of IT’s success in enabling higher value IT activities, which, by definition, are close to/embedded in business capability.
Viva la shadow IT!
Filed under: IS Management, IT Management, IT Maturity Tagged: | IT innovation, Level 3 business-IT maturity, shadow IT
It’s possible also that this trend will be impacted by the nature of infrastructure technology itself, as we travel this same timeline. I’m thinking of the ways in which the layers of the traditional OSI Stack are becoming commoditized and compressed (indeed we seldom even speak of some of these layers any longer), and the trend (though not yet mature) toward “business aware” infrastructures. Another perspective on this is the trend we hear about the necessity for IT staff to become more “business process aware.” In either case, the technical infrastructure moves closer to the hands of those engineering the business processes, which could create an environment less reliant on IT’s ability to execute on a portfolio of projects.
So,… ‘perhaps there are some organic forces at work lending support for the revolution.
Thanks, Bob – an excellent pint, at many levels (no surprise, considering it comes from a ‘master IT architect’ who has an amazing ability to think in terms of multiple levels!) This idea of the OSI stack as one layer in an evolving larger stack is important. Also, the idea that as you move up the stack, the lower levels tend to beocme commoditized and compressed is key to advancing business-IT maturity.
I will pick up the point about the larger stack in an upcoming post.
[...] was reminded of this framework the other day by a response to my post on Shadow IT. Here’s Jacob’s [...]
[...] was reminded of this framework the other day by a response to my post on Shadow IT. Here’s Jacob’s [...]