September 25, 2024

What does it mean to be pragmatic in IT?

I’m unashamedly parsimonious. I'm not sure if it’s my Scottish heritage, or the fact that I’m surrounded by Lean practitioners (my sister is a Lean process coach), but I detest waste, refuse to spend a dollar more than I need to, and despise process for processes’ sake. I don’t believe that rules are there to be broken, but I am a strong advocate for them being tested. Regularly. And I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have somewhat of a reputation (again, unashamedly so) for asking the uncomfortable questions of our customers. Our intent is always noble – as belts tighten and risk landscapes darken, finding more efficient ways of being allows us to do more for less.

Whether in the realm of Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Modernisation, Critical Infrastructure or Modern Workplace, we extol the virtues of functional pragmatism… but how does that manifest itself in the realm of IT? Well, it’s hard to bottle, and at the risk of sounding cliched, it’s more of a vibe than a set of rules – but the following are some examples that we regularly encounter where taking a contextualised, pragmatic approach tends to yield (sometimes unexpectedly) positive outcomes.

Keep an open mind

I remember the days when cloud was the solution looking for a problem. And the cloud vendors have done a brilliant job of peddling this rhetoric. Don’t get me wrong – if I had to paint a nirvana state, then done right I do see SaaS and PaaS as the zenith of IT practice today. But every business has its idiosyncrasies and realities… mostly financial. If you’re looking to the cloud because the services on offer aren’t available on-premises, then that’s a pretty solid justification for a move to public cloud. But if you’re looking for agility, cost savings and simplicity – then you may be able to achieve those outcomes on premises if you use what you have a little differently. Public cloud isn’t the only type of cloud. If you focus on what you’re looking to achieve and leave preconceived notions on how you plan to achieve that at the door, you’ll have a much higher chance of backing the right solution.

Know your people

It’s important to understand the capability and capacity of your people. I would love to take a spin in a formula one car, but there’s a very good chance I’d find myself in the gravel sooner than a moggy eating a chocolate bar. Similarly, introducing bleeding edge technologies and systems that do everything and more won’t turn your teams into a bunch of Oscar Piastris overnight – you need to bring them along on the journey, which is why we encourage step changes over quantum leaps.

Capacity is also an important consideration – if you aren’t prepared to “size up” you may need to reconsider the platforms you adopt. ServiceNow as an example is the pre-eminent ITSM tool, however it typically requires full time resources dedicated to extracting the most out of it. If you have a small IT team, something less capable (though less complicated) may paradoxically yield greater results.

Innovate, but don’t overcomplicate

Kubernetes is great! It’s self-healing, self-scaling and abstracted. But unless Kubernetes is your only hosting platform, chances are it’s just another set of (typically unique) tools your teams need to operationally onboard and support. That’s not to say it doesn’t make sense for your organisation, but I’m simplicity’s number one fan. If a couple of VMs behind a load balancer can provide the same functional, and better non-functional outcome… then do it.
Vendor best practice isn’t necessarily your best practice.

We recently deployed a Cloud Firewall service for a customer who had a (very) small team looking after all project and BAU work in the cloud. Vendor best practice design catered for all scenarios, but the customer only needed a subset of these capabilities. Thinking outside the box, we came up with a solution that not only met the functional requirements of the solution, but was also very simple to implement and maintain - much more so than the overly complicated vendor solution. Vendor blueprints might be a great place to start, but adopting them rote may result in an undesired rod for your back.

Align with the realities of the business

I’m guilty of thinking IT was the business in the early days of my career. As I moved into more business facing roles however, I realised that in the vast majority of enterprises, IT is there to support the business. Granted it is becoming a far more influential component in differentiation, but at the core, there isn’t a direct correlation between IT operational excellence and business success. If it doesn’t matter to the business (that is, if it isn’t recognised as a corporate risk or imperative), then no matter how important IT thinks it is, it’ll be a tough sell. Rolling your IT strategy up into your corporate strategy is critical in ensuring your initiatives are supported from the top down, and if you frame your IT proposals in the context of company outcomes, you’re far more likely to receive endorsement.

Focus on the biggest bang-for-buck

It’s the stich in time that delivers nine – just because something should be done, doesn’t mean it needs to be done now. If you spend a little bit of time determining which activities deliver the highest value and focus your efforts on delivering those “value multipliers” first, you can greatly accelerate future initiatives. Value is subjective, and should be considered in context of all the above elements to determine what really does matter to your business. Sometimes that isn’t clear, particularly in the midst of trial and turmoil, and that’s where we can help – providing our insight and experience to hone that prioritisation.

Pragmatism by definition is an ideology. An attitude. Personally, it’s been brought about through a nature of skepticism. Whether through nature or nurture, I find myself coalesced with a bunch of likeminded individuals at Cordant who relish the opportunity to uncover optimal outcomes to difficult scenarios. We will challenge you. We will challenge ourselves. If you’re sick of the same old cookie cutter patterns and would like to know more about our pragmatic approach to IT (and OT), feel free to reach out – we love working with organisations who aren’t afraid to challenge the status-quo and shake the proverbial apple tree.

Bring it.

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