The end of the year is near and it’s time to look back and review what was noteworthy in the past year and whether last year’s predictions came true. Information Week published a list of the 20 most important IT trends in 2011. According to the article’s author Eric Lundquist, the first on the list is the realization that IT is too slow, something that the magazine wrote about at the beginning of the year.
It strikes me as so true because my experience in IT also collaborates that IT is often like a heavy brick that drags behind and makes business more difficult instead of just the opposite. IT was supposed to make business faster, better and more efficient. The pace of business is faster and users are more anxious to get quick results and immediate responses to their queries. IT must constantly struggle to catch up. And IT isn’t too slow just because of poor technology or slow information systems. We can always buy a newer, better, faster server. The more difficult factor is in the response of the IT department to the requirements of the business. This is in return due to the methodologies, approaches, techniques, tools, security limitations, available resources and so much more overhead that increases the time from an initial idea to its implementation.
Business users see the implementation of information systems as too lengthy and therefore it’s not surprising that agile is becoming increasingly popular. Agile allows the users to see tangible results during information system development and enables them to have results quickly. More than ever it is crucial that IT processes are standardized and reusable so that it doesn’t become necessary to reinvent the wheel on each new project. Only time will tell whether agile is really the solution to IT being too slow. Currently it seems like a lifeline for business users who want quicker solutions to their business requirements.