We Need More Agile IT Now

There is more to IT than software development. Not only do we build software-based solutions for our stakeholders, we also release them into production and we operate and support them once there. There are also cross-solution organizational functions such as enterprise architecture, portfolio management, data management, and others that occur in parallel to software development and operations. Recently, I decided to research the question: How effective are these IT functions? I found that we have a lot of room for improvement.

In September through November of 2014, I ran an online survey that explored the effectiveness of several common IT functions. The survey was advertised in my Dr. Dobb's article Software Development is Very, Very Hard, via several Twitter posts, and at my IT Surveys home page.

The survey attracted 117 respondents, almost half of whom had 20 or more years of experience in IT (88% had 10 or more years). The survey explored two fundamental issues: How easy it is to work with the people fulfilling various IT functions, and how much value these functions provide the organization.

Read the rest of this article on Dr. Dobb's.