IT – it's all a blur

IT is changing.

“What’s new there?”, you say. “IT is always changing. It sometimes seems at though it deliberately changes every 6 months in order to extract more money from me to keep up to date.”

I sympathise. Really, I do. From my side of the fence it can be really frustrating to see something that has taken years to put together have a shelf-life measured in months. The sheer pace of innovation and change is breathtaking, and concerning. In what other arena would you try to create something so big and complicated and then rip it down so quickly afterwards. Some of the software that is put together these days rivals skyscrapers in the amount of man-days required to create, and yet in 5 years time it will be obsolete. Weird.

But there is a change taking place. Software is becoming more self-service. “You need a calendar, sir? No problem, here you go. And a portion of mapping on top of that? No problem.” A lot of this is happening on the web in the form of Web 2.0 applications, although there is quite a way to go in improving the inter-operability of these services. You may have heard of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), which is a framework that, in time, should get us closer to the goal of seamless integration between the pieces of software that we decide best meet our requirements.

As this enviroment comes together, it is noticeable that there is a much greater opportunity for non-developers to put relatively complex systems together. In essence, the distinction between an IT person and an end-user or power-user is blurring. Anyone, in theory, can develop a system using tools available on the web without needing the technical expertise of a developer. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of people ‘dabbling’ as the tools develop.

However, I would argue that you should utilise the knowledge and expertise of an IT consultant if you want to create something sustainable. It’s probably not the done thing to refer to the same post in two successive blogs, but Joel Spolsky’s take on Lego Programming is a good lesson from someone who really knows his stuff. Returning to the skyscraper analogy, if you don’t design it right from the start, then it’s bound to come crashing down around your ears.

I’m sure there will be many people wondering if it’s a good thing to give application development capabilities to end users. However, that has been with us for many years. How many people do you know who have created, sometimes quite complex, systems using Excel or Access? In my particular area of experience, Lotus Notes, the ease at which a new application can be created from a template and then tweaked to a person’s requirements has allowed power-users to solve problems without having to go through the usually complex and time-consuming process of requesting a new solution from their IT department. And, truth be told, it’s a means of involving the user more closely in the IT decision-making process, a topic Kevin Pettitt blogs about today.

So IT is opening itself up more and more. Of course you’ll still have developers who create the wonderful tools everyone will be using to solve their problems, but in-house IT developers will be under pressure as end-users create their own solutions. The only answer is to join them, and use your skills to influence how the solutions are created. Better gloss up your consulting skills!