From Hero’s to Process: The IT Growth Challenge

I recently finished reading How to Castrate a Bull by Dave Hitz, one of the founders of NetApp. I found one concept in particular to stick in my head: as companies get larger they naturally gravitate away from needing hero’s to needing more process. Dave tells the story of how during the early years of NetApp, one support engineer went above and beyond to satisfy the needs of a customer. The support engineer took a call late in the evening and determined the customers NetApp unit needed to be replaced. The engineer went into manufacturing, took a new unit off the line, hopped a flight to the customers’ location and worked all night to install the new unit. Once word got back to Dave about the engineer's heroics, the engineer was nowhere to be found. Turns out, the engineer was asleep in the customers’ parking lot inside the van he had rented. Dave points out that at the time, this engineer was hailed as a hero but that now he hopes this kind of thing never happens again. Why? When NetApp was a small company its customer base was generally small organizations with very little gear. They themselves where very nimble and acted on failures in their enterprise very swiftly. The catch is, given their small size and the amount of IT gear in their enterprise, they usually did not encounter a large number of failures. When failures are rare, organizations can afford to rely on hero’s to step up in those rare occasions where duty calls. As enterprises get larger, the amount of IT gear and the complexity of the environment that gear supports also grow. Failures become more common place and the degree to which you can rely on hero’s is diminished. For example, for simplicity say a piece of IT gear has an average failure rate of once every 365 days. A small organization with only one of these devices can expect a failure once a year. A larger organization with 365 of these devices can expect a failure every day! Larger IT enterprises need process to deal with these repeated occurrences, not hero’s to step up on rare occasions. Hero’s come and go, process is permanent. Dave's point is that the same behavior that won the engineer and NetApp accolades from the small customer years ago, would likely lose business in a large enterprise

This evolution from needing hero’s to needing process is one of the most subtle yet important changes an IT leader must make as his or her enterprise grows larger and more complex. Tearing down technical fiefdoms, redefining reward systems, purposefully slowing down to gain control and potentially even making staffing adjustments is a daunting set of goals. This evolution inside of IT is a natural part of organizational growth and if handled correctly can be a very exciting managerial challenge.

Keeping Your Technology Infrastructure "Modern Enough"

How modern does your infrastructure need to be? The high level, seemingly safe answer to this question is that "enough" of any given technology or process has been put in place when that particular solution matches the business need. Finding this utopian point of solution fit is often trickier than it seems. It is critical however that as a technology leader, you think hard about the solutions you propose to the business. You must ensure you are not being whipped around by the latest technology trends being hyped to you by salesmen in blue blazers while at the same time ensuring that under your stewardship your organization is not missing opportunities engendered by emerging technologies. You must balance the opposing pressures of technology staff members who always see the benefit of the latest and greatest tools with the need to meet capital and operational budgets. The balance must be reached in a way that brings tangible benefit to the business. How do you deliver? I have found that staying focused on a few basics with respect to technology evaluations, business acumen and people management go a long way.

First, separate trends from true paradigm shifts. For example, no one would argue that the advent of virtualization technologies has brought about a true paradigm shift in the creation and management of corporate infrastructures. As a technology leader, you have to identify that and understand where your particular organization can benefit. With respect to something as technical as virtualization, it will likely be up to you to help educate the business about the benefits of making the virtual transition. Make sure you understand some the basics of your organizations business model and strategies in order to help guide your proposal and thinking around such paradigm changing technologies as virtualization. Be aware however that as vendors see these fundamental paradigm shifts happening, they will rush in with products to grab market share, not all of which will have staying power. Be cognizant of the vendors long-term plans for any given technology, how it fits into their strategic portfolio, how likely they are to continue to dedicate R&D dollars to the product 5 to 10 years from now.

Second, understand the real ROI potential of any new technology and take the time to analyze how your particular operation will benefit. See my post here for a discussion on calculating ROI and to download a spreadsheet model. Every particular technology operation has its specific set of characteristics that drive its cost structure. Before you recommend upgrading or changing any of them, know where you are and what your benefit will be. Don’t just use high level concepts in presentations to CFO’s such as “it will lower capital expense” or it will make us more flexible”. Dig deep and be specific, you may find there is no real benefit at all!

Third, understand your teams ability to support a new technology architecture on an ongoing basis. Think hard about what the true people cost will be when evaluating your need to move to a more modern technology infrastructure paradigm such as virtualization. Do you have the skill in house now? Do you have folks you can train? Will you need support from vendors on an ongoing basis? Make sure these “soft” considerations don’t get lost in the discussion over ROI with respect to a new technology. Training, retention, and outside support all help add the operational budget squeeze most technology managers feel. Make sure you are not putting your organization at risk with respect to available support resources just in order to introduce a newer technology or process.

Finally, make sure you are not pushing for a technology or process because you or your team “wants" to learn it. For example, many IT leaders see the value in and "want" to implement an ITIL based management process for their IT operations. This desire can easily turn into conversations with CFO's that start out as we "must" implement ITIL. Make sure any given technology or technology management practice fits the needs of your organization, that it truly has the potential to add value. Top notch technology folks crave to learn and use the latest technologies and process, harness that drive and focus it in the right places.

The above points are certainly not exhaustive but taken together they can help you think critically about technology architecture shifts or upgrades. Make sure you have truly thought out your decisions. Be willing to make hard decisions even if they are not the most popular with your team. Most importantly, be prepared to give a well thought out business case with respect to your current technology architecture state and your strategic plans for moving forward.