IT's moment of truth. One of my recent InfoWorld columns (“IT's moment of truth“)
is probably the most important one I've written, because it attempts to
address a serious spiritual challenge in IT operations. Here's a
snippet:
The battle for the soul of IT takes place at the same intersection
where different approaches to solving technology problems collide. One
camp in the battle believes that it ain't got a thing if it ain't got
that hands-on swing — that IT's calling is to adopt solutions with
every knob and dial of every system and service exposed and in easy
reach for maximum tweakability. Those who make other choices are simply
technical girly-men who can't handle the “real” work of IT. In theory,
this belief gives IT maximum power over its environment and presumably
maximum business leverage. In reality, I think the “we must have our
hands on everything” approach simply encourages a lot of useless
knob-twiddling and dial-flipping with very little business value. This
camp of corporate IT can continue its myopic clinging to hands-on
operations as its raison d'être, but I think they are gripping with the
cold, stiff fingers of dead men.
Read the rest. [Chad Dickerson: CTO Connection]