Stop Treating Your IT Shop Like a Manufacturing Line

Unless you can find a manufacturer to model that can:

1. Deliver a product to customers within minutes of the order being placed

2. Modify the product for free during the manufacturing process no matter how large or small the change

3. Agree to be paid only the cost of materials

4. Provide the ability for the customer to reconfigure the product to match actually use once received

5. Align product capabilities with your operational best practices, keep your business apprised of advances in their technology as well as ensure they are aware of any changes you make to your core business

There may be business models in other verticals that make sense to adapt to IT, but manufacturing isn’t it. Your business unit customers are expecting a host of capabilities in next generation IT that are incompatible with other business models. They want to prototype an application with a bare minimum of requirements, tune the application and infrastructure configuration as they introduce functionality and promote to a supported production environment as soon as it’s ready. That’s not like any manufacturing environment out there. So stop already – roll up your sleeves, pour another cup of coffee, head to the meeting room in your office with the biggest whiteboard and start thinking about how you can enable your business.

Categories: Technology

Chris Saunders

Infrastructure nerd learning to code and be a better human