- 25 August, 2008 06:53 PM EST
- Don't Modernize IT - Unless You Modernize the Enterprise Too
"IT modernization" is clearly a hot topic these days (see "IT Modernization: The Changing of the Guard"). Gartner's enterprise architecture analysts are receiving more and more inquiries about what role EA teams should play in IT modernization efforts. My answer? First and foremost, EA's role should be to encourage the organization not to modernize IT – that is, not unless the enterprise itself gets modernized along with IT.
Specifically, EA's role should be to push back against (or at least balance) the techno-centric "let's upgrade everything because we can" mentality that IT modernization efforts too often become. Rather than support such misguided efforts, architects should instead be suggesting when to leave things alone - or when to consider outsourcing to conventional or radically new (cloud) providers. Architects should push to modernize not just technology for existing solutions, but also business and information architecture aspects of those solutions.
Too often, "IT modernizers" consolidate everything only to find that this doesn't help as much as they'd hoped. Meanwhile, they have changed nothing fundamental for the business, other than perhaps slightly lowering the cost and improving the operational quality of what they already have. When this happens, there is no business transformation - no business-driven, architected change to the enterprise. Instead, there is only current-state churn.
The "change for change's sake" push commonly uses a "let’s get out ahead of the business" argument, which often means spending money on a new IT infrastructure capability or capacity that gets minimal use. Yet, if business changes do occur quickly, such capability or capacity must quickly be made available, preferably at modest incremental cost rather than with huge IT modernization capacity jumps. The true agility EA should strive for would be to enable such elasticity just in time for (but not before) the moment when the business transformation actually demands such change.
Only if the enterprise itself is modernizing should IT modernize. If no business changes are defined, IT shouldn't be changing either. Enterprise architects should be front and center in sending this message to any would-be "IT modernizers" within their own organizations.
