Submitted by Morphlabs on May 10, 2012
At a recent Agile Project Managers Meetup, the key themes were “scope creep” and “requirements management.” One of the speakers, a seasoned CIO, presented the following list under the always-important category of “Project Management Worst Practices.”
One has to wonder what lies ahead for a CIO driven by such guidelines, assuming even a successful track record isn’t protection from today’s emphasis on agility motivated “pivots.” To be sure, these are justifiable admonitions if the target is poor planning. However, as competitive innovation intensifies, driven largely by technology movements such as open source and cloud computing, CIOs will be compelled to adjust. What might appear like a surprise or failure brought about by poor planning will more commonly be the result of rapidly changing customer sentiment, shifting market conditions and nimble competitors. As recommended in “The Lean Startup,” agile CIOs and the stakeholders they support will need to experiment rapidly and create minimal viable products. They’ll need to elicit feedback often (deal with surprises), fail fast (deal with let downs) and pivot (often making new investments with new delivery dates). While leaders may feel backed into corners, lucrative opportunities wait for those that learn how to deal with this new reality.
It goes without saying that the key element in coping with change is savvy, visionary leadership. However, all great leaders rely on tools to implement their strategic vision. Nowadays, those tools are efficient information technology (IT) resources, among which are open source frameworks and cloud computing platforms. It’s ironic that the technologies which played a key role in causing the disruption (open source and cloud-driven change) are also the enablers of an agile business, which ultimately can capitalize on change.
As the first OpenStack converged infrastructure for enterprise private cloud deployments, the Morphlabs mCloud Rack E is an ideal platform on which agile CIOs can implement their strategic vision. Through mCloud solutions, CIOs can keep costs low, mitigating risk, while maintaining extremely high performance, leveraging elasticity with security, and taking advantage of the benefits that come from a platform built on open standards. They’re able to use cloud tools and processes to create minimum viable products, experiment often and pivot rapidly in response to customers, competitors and the marketplace at large – the key benefits of Dynamic Infrastructure Services as defined by Forrester. These kinds of cloud and open source innovations are the next step in infrastructure for the enterprise and will turn what were once “worst practices” into agents of opportunity for savvy strategic leaders.
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