…but developer productivity and commercial flexibility are bigger This post goes into technology a little more than usual so the TL;DR version for busy CIO’s is: Please make sure some of your teams are experimenting with serverless technology from Amazon or other providers. The rest of this post explains why Amazon is leading the transformation of software development with an obscure bit of technology from Google.
I recently noticed that I have been using @CIOPortfolio for 5 years now and that got me thinking about what has changed for CIOs over that time. Although digital technology is renowned for its frenetic pace of innovation (here we go again!) you could argue that not much has changed. Surprisingly, that is a terrifically useful insight for CIOs.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the agile movement is taking over the world. For example, Amazon is famously agile and because it can make changes to its software every second it can maintain its lead in existing markets whilst conquering new ones. But look more carefully and, of course, things are more complicated than that. In many respects, leading digital businesses are not as agile as they seem.
Thanks to the 100 or so people who have taken a look at the IT Portfolio survey app so far. I am still looking for more feedback so that I can improve both the content of the survey and the way the app works. If you want to help just pick your favourite phone/tablet/PC, point your browser at the site and start moving the sliders around with your finger/stylus/mouse. The app looks best on a large tablet but I have used it on a compact mobile phone held in landscape mode. Let me have feedback by adding a comment below or you can get in touch via Twitter Update I am still making changes and releasing new versions of the app. The app is now based on serverless technology and I have written another blog post about making the migration.
This is quite a long post so here is the 30-second version: organising services around calendars and clocks is generally a bad idea it is much better to organise around outcomes and risks this is now a practical option because of new technology CIOs can take the lead and help the whole enterprise. Sarah Wilkinson, CTO for the UK Home Office, recently wrote a post about breaking away from some long held traditions in IT. The article includes some great advice but I think we need to go further.
