Computer Software, Technology or Platform Selection Criteria

It is not unusual to have high frequency of analysis work on Software, Technology and Platform selection. Any medium size IT Department of any organization have around 400 to 500 Computer Software Solution in place catering to different business organization. These Application Software innovate itself around every 2-3 years and sometimes other Application Software take their place or intrude their space thus making the Software obsolete. Thus, in every 2-3 year cycle, we need to re-evaluate IT landscape and IT portfolio to adjust the changing environment. IT organization is in need of a well defined methodology, template and guideline for such activity. In my opinion this task is common but we don't have a standard methodology for this. This work has been done repeatedly in every IT organization but with some ad-hoc methodology. I was wondering, if it is possible to capture few general guidelines to be follow for this analysis activity. Following text covers few high level abstract thoughts and ideas which could fulfill the need of any such analysis.

Follow The Industry Trend

How close is our decision with respect to trends in the IT industry. In other words, does the Technology Platform, which we have chosen is par with where industry is moving. For example, if the new trend shows that our system should be utilizing Big Data capability, then, are we making our decisions which is par with this. Are we even aware of these technologies or still sticking to the years old legacy systems. I'm sure someone, even in leadership level, might have heard the IT buzzword but did they really understood the use case behind that buzzword. It needs some time and effort in order understand those internal intricacies. Someone can argue, why do we need that? Trust, me I have heard it many times and I couldn't convince them either because they didn't want to or because they couldn't related the idea to their existing understanding. But anyway, let's face it, whether we like the Technology, Understand it or not, it is going to consume us in one way or other within some time. This is the factual truth of IT Industry. Current example could be Computerization, Computer Revolution, 3-Tier Software Architecture, Web Application, Business Process Automation and Web Development. All these ideas once looked too good to be true, but we have already lived past those ideas. Now, on the horizon we have new candidates. These are few technology examples which will be part of our day to day IT activity - Internet-Of-Things, Cloud, Big Data and 3D Printing.

Common Selection Criteria or Analysis Methodology

These are few high level point of research needed to find out how well the target Technology Platform fits into the current requirement. 

• People and Process Change
• Financial Analysis
• Technology Maturity
• Capability Analysis

Further on, additional analysis criteria could be:

• Does the IT decision aligns with Industry Trend
• General Survey on each Technology decision
• Worked-on Use Case Scenario with Technology
• Little Cultural shift on what else do we do other than day to day job
• Do we have enough time for Technology Appetite
• Nexus of forces

Does the IT decision aligns with Industry Trend

While evaluating these criteria, a big question often asked is - why IT decision should be aligned with IT Trend? To understand and answer this question one would need to focus on following points:

1. IT Industries Technology grows exponentially compared to other industries
2. Lot of technological advancement and enablement has already happened but enterprises need to catch up on those based on case by case basis.
3. There are still many technology use cases in the backlog
4. Based on the past history of IT industry, like Mainframe to Cloud things have happened so swiftly that by the time enterprise realized the idea their competitors have already gone a long way ahead
5. Technology in any industry, specially in IT, is so complex and dynamic to catch, understand and assimilate that manytimes we are left behind. The best would be to trust the economist on economy and do our job where we are expert in. The reason of pointing out this is because many of the Technology decision in many of the organizations are still taken by business leaders rather than Technical leaders, those would be Enterprise Architects. Technology Leader's role and time is spent in overall Technology oversight rather than day to day management of the organization.
6. There is definitely not a silver bullet or generic template that would let you make specific decision because every decision would be different case by case.
7. Have you heard of these Technology coming in - #IOT, BYOD, Big Data, IPV6, Software Defined Network and Mobility. Not to mention Cloud, SaaS, iPaaS, IaaS, etc. now are part of day to day IT but still needs to be adopted by many organization. 
8. For God sake, please don’t tell me we are moving to Star War age? Does this sound true to you?
9. Decisions are moving from executive hand to consumers. You like it or not, aware or not, but that is a reality. If IT organization is not going to make right decision, business would choose their own solution from the Cloud and will only need IT to support it or even not.
10. There is only a limit to how much you can control the free forces of IT. Ideas, knowledge, Business Solutions are everywhere. Better you be prepared or people will by-pass you.
11. If you don't take the right Technological decision someone else would do.

Technology Appetite

Are we doing enough to free up our time to sharpen the saw or busy saving our current job, activity and comfort zone. What we should be doing is “Solving the greatest Mystery & Puzzle of all time and that is - how IT will deliver services to Business?” We have to discover it. The truth is this challenge will always be there because of the dynamic nature of Information Technology. There are many new offering in the market every 2-3 years period and because of that we need to reinvent our IT Strategy through different combination of those Technological Offering. If we are unable to do this, then there is a direct impact on our service. E.g. everyone needs Mobile platform with lower cost. This is the real job of CIO & his team including Enterprise Architects. Thank God I’m an Enterprise Architect and able to focus my energy in that direction. Other example, in the current technology era could be commoditization of  Software, Platform, Infrastructure. Cloud frees up our time so that we can focus on better business enablement rather than working on commodity items. Moving to Cloud saves us lot of time and effort to maximize the opportunity by exploiting cloud technology rather than iron fencing our current skill-set till it is blasted away by the market forces.

Cultural Shift

There needs a cultural shift in what we do on day to day basis. One way to boost ‘Think-out-of-the-box’ is to free up few of our time from day to day activities. IT & its people are insular because they are knee deep into their day to day activities. Months and Months passes by before we life our head to see where exactly we are going. Is this the reason, why Google culture has it that Friday is yours. True or not, but this can revolutionize the decision making strategy and work culture in IT. One day you fly above your territory and look down from 10,000 feet above and make out how much your work make sense to what the corporate vision is. "Hey, now I see corporate vision. I didn't realize it looks so different than I thought of".

Work on Use Case Scenario

Not all technical scenarios will have business looking Use Case but making them up close will make decision more informed. Adding Use Case to any of these decision criteria helps understand because not everyone is coming from the same background or have spent same time. Generally this task is done very poorly in most of the organization. Only best of breed Enterprise Architecture practice will have fully compliance Capability Analysis and Capability to System mapping. Further on, it will have list of detailed requirements associated with those Capabilities. Now, with the new Technology Platform or Software, it would be real easy to run down the list and mark High/Medium/Low match of the requirement. This exercise will provide an abstract idea whether even to continue our decision or not. We want to make sure we don't need Ferrari to go from point A to point B, but at the same time business users should be fully satisfied with the solution.

Involvement / Collaboration

Not everyone could be made part of any exercise but it would be wise to get their feedback and recommendations at different phases. This seems little weird because this is not how we work in any of the organization. People might even laugh and criticize this idea as a waste of time. But, based on the theory of Collaboration and Contribution, it makes best sense to utilize the knowledge pool of any enterprise. This process needs to be more streamlined for case by case basis. This is how Open Source Community works. So, why not inside an organization. We don't need all but few enthusiast to do quality check on the analyzed deliverable. Volunteering would be the best approach and there will always be someone there. A simple survey few weeks in advance would give high level feedback on the decision.

Customer Connection

What about direct connectivity with Customer Engagement Officer. This is the source of Truth. We work to make our customer happy. It really doesn't matter whether you could die for a product or technology but if customers doesn't like it then it is all over, you are failed. Not to forget, market is driven by Consumers. Ideas come from this channel in the form of Use Cases. Sometimes we take customer feedback too lightly in the form of customer's wishful thinking which is beyond implementation. Great inventions and discoveries come from thought provoking crazy ideas. Who could have imagined the power of Cloud Computing and still counting. In storm of workloads IT sometime forgets the needs of Business and tries to enforce their own solution on them and it doesn't work for long.

Nexus of forces

Research team should be able to feel the Nexus of forces coming from Social Media, Cloud, Mobile and other areas. Customers are bombarded with crazy ideas and thought and everyone tries to have the latest of all with surgical precision. Cloud have enabled a larger group of talented entrepreneurs to provide similar capability which took years to develop by some organization. A small site like Facebook becomes a giant technology leader in 10 years. A small mobile App like WhatsApp are exchanged hands in billions of dollars. Totally unbelievable.

Other than these there are other thoughts which are similar in nature of what described above. Sometimes an honest research provides a nudge. I would recommend to follow that nudge to a distant and it will tell you whether you are on your way or not. There are other political, unawareness influences but as mentioned above it doesn't stand long on itself. IT trend will not let it stand for more, it has to be on track in order to run the business.

References

Software Entrepreneur Must Go Mobile First or Die