Agile IT during Turbulent Times

While I write this article in Jan 2021, the world is not much different from 2020 because of COVID-19. COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China, and subsequently spread worldwide, even to Antarctica.

To date, we have 101 million confirmed cases and 2 million deaths. Singapore is not spared. We went to Circuit Breaker (lockdown) during April 2020 to contain the virus from spreading.

Work From B̵e̵d̵Home

Photo by Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash

Work from home was very different for all of us. I was fortunate to have enough computing devices for my kids when they started their Home Based Learnings for schools. However, for a lot of parents out there, they were rushing to get the desktops, laptops, and monitors that were available in the stores for themselves and their kids. This is on top of the mad rush for toilet papers in the supermarkets.

Change is here to stay, whether you like it or not.

Working from home during Circuit Breaker is no different for me except with all my kids around me during day time. It was a smooth transition for me because the tools I use were mostly on the cloud but I can’t say for other organizations. It was not easy with 3 kids and online meetings together at the same time. My wife was the peacemaker and kudos to her to keep everyone safe and happy.

Horror stories we hear from the ground include having to bring back their office desktops and monitors, scaling up VPN access, and VDI. IT departments were preparing laptops with VPN access around the clock for employees to use.

BCP or Business Continuity Plan was put into action or was it? The reality is that many businesses were prepared for a different reason. It wasn’t a DR exercise for servers and workload. Effectively, it was a DR for people. We were working in Team A or B, and organizations were not prepared for this.

Disruption came but we were unprepared.

危機即轉機

While researching for this article, I came across this Chinese idiom “危機即轉機” (A crisis is a chance or opportunity) mentioned by a local SME business owner in Singapore.

Many businesses have been affected and many more shuttered across the globe. Is COVID-19 a disruptor? You can certainly say that COVID-19 is a disruptor even though it is an epidemic of an infectious disease. It has disrupted our economy, our businesses, and our way of life.

Fortunately, many businesses have also taken this opportunity to go online or pivoted to survive due to a change in consumer patterns. A new normal has emerged during this crisis. Teams are now leaner and working remotely. The use of automation has increased. There is now less resistance to experimenting and taking risks.

For any business to have the ability to pivot or have new initiatives largely depends on its people, process, and technology. It is even harder for large enterprises with a traditional mindset or lack of agile tools to be able to react quickly to changing business needs.

COVID-19 Accelerating Digital Transformation

In a McKinsey & Company survey titled, “How COVID-19 Has Pushed Companies Over The Technology Tipping Point — And Transformed Business Forever.” published on 5 Oct 2020, it is interesting to note the following:

• For organizations that have effective responses to COVID-19, 72% were first in their industries to experiment with new technologies during the crisis.
• Because of the crisis, 68% of the respondents now believe modernizing core technologies to keep up with the competition or investing more in technology to make it a competitive advantage is of strategic importance. Compared to just 48% in a 2017 survey where executives ranked cost savings as one of the most important priorities for their digital strategies.

Facing a disruptor like COVID-19 requires a shift in the way we conduct our business and has brought a change in the way we view technology. Technology is no longer about cost-saving but as an enabler to innovation.

Technology as an Enabler

In a crisis, how can we quickly adapt to changes or begin new initiatives when our IT infrastructure is too slow? How can we experiment often and fail fast when it takes ages to provision a new environment?

This is where cloud-native applications, containers, cloud computing, and automation are key ingredients for Agile IT.

• Cloud-Native and not monolithic applications. Cloud-native applications allow us to rapidly incorporate user feedback for continuous improvement, increase the scalability and availability of services,
• With DevOps and containers, developers can easily release and update applications as a collection of loosely coupled services, like microservices, instead of having to wait for one large release, thus increasing our velocity for software releases.
• Embrace Hybrid Cloud. Cloud computing allows you to tap on additional computing resources with speed, scalability, and agility.
• Automate your on-premises data center and cloud computing resources. As you scale to the cloud, automation will become increasingly more important to keep your systems healthy and secure when the IT Ops team is already stretched. Speed up the provisioning of new environments with self-service and provide a consistent Standard Operating Environment to your developers.

Conclusion

COVID-19 is a disruptor. It is not the first and certainly not the last. Digital disruptors like Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon have happened and COVID-19 is no different. We have seen how Agile IT plays an important role in allowing businesses to compete and innovate.

It is heartening that many businesses have embraced the use of technology in the current crisis. However, there will be businesses that are using this crisis to plan for the “next normal”, while others can’t wait to go back to the old world. Nevertheless, we are possibly seeing the adoption of technology at a rate that we have never seen before.

Stay safe and stay healthy.