3 Powerful Ways Decentralizing IT is a Force Multiplier in Digital Transformation

I was hired to lead technology at Businessweek magazine fifteen years ago.
Back then, it was a McGraw Hill company, and one business in its information
and media segment. I was the business unit’s CIO responsible for
businessweek.com, content management platforms, subscription management
workflows, and other technologies. The corporate CIO oversaw several shared
services, including the data center, end-user computing, and the ERP, while
the divisional CIO oversaw several platforms shared with the other
information and media companies, including Platts, JD Power, and McGraw Hill
Construction (now Dodge Data and Analytics). 

I share this background because leading a decentralized IT isn’t anything
new. CIOs have shifted models from centralized to decentralized for decades
in the same way organizations shift back and forth from outsourcing to
insourcing models.

But decentralizing IT today is more about carving up roles/responsibilities,
enabling business unit innovations, or simplifying with shared services.
Today, decentralizing aspects of IT practices can lead to
digital transformation force multipliers, address
technology skillset gaps, and empower business stakeholders with
self-service capabilities.

Here are three areas to focus on:

1. Citizen Data Science and Proactive Data Governance

Here’s why Michael Berthold, CEO at
KNIME, believes in
decentralizing data science. 

“Data Science is moving fast into an essential role, but that doesn’t mean
IT owns it. Rather, CIOs need to ensure all stakeholders involved in making
sense out of data are empowered with the utmost flexibility to access and
query all available data. They must ensure generating insights isn’t delayed
by lengthy approval and internal project-request cycles. This is also true
for data science models being pushed back into production; agile
environments need to ensure speedy model refinement and updating.”

Why is this a powerful force multiplier: Business teams are more
likely to ask relevant questions, seek insights, and pursue actions. Citizen
data science provides the platform, and proactive data governance helps
improve data quality and institutes the guardrails when implementing
analytics.

2. Hybrid Working Requires Agile Collaboration

Waterfall project plans, mile-long requirements documents, and “business-IT
alignment” are (hopefully) long gone. But many IT leaders acknowledge that
achieving
agile cultures, cross-functional innovation teams, and optimizing OKRs (Objectives and
Key Results) is still a work in progress. Hybrid working can be a catalyst
to accelerate the collaboration required to bring business, data, and
technically skilled people to
partner on roadmaps, short-term wins, and delivering business impacts.

Bob Davis, CMO at
Plutora, that
this collaboration is achieved through transparency of the program portfolio
and ideation pipeline.

“CIOs must understand that work is no longer about communication; it’s about
collaboration. Communication is manual and slows down the pace of work.
Collaboration is automated, moves projects along quicker, and provides
remote teams with complete portfolio and pipeline visibility. Collaboration
is achievable with value stream management, which enables decentralized
teams to stay on the same page and maintain high-quality, efficient software
delivery that delights customers and delivers value.”

Why is this a powerful force multiplier: How does innovation
begin in your organization? How can an employee champion an idea and
experiment on solutions? I believe it begins with developing a
vision statement, establishing
value streams, and providing transparency around the ideation process. 

3. Co-create Apps, Integrations, and Automations with Low-Code and No-Code

While agile practices and value stream management provide the workflow
foundations for decentralizing technology practices, CIOs and IT departments
still need low-code and no-code technologies to support collaboration and
experimentation. And
low-code / no-code
is not just for building apps; there are platforms today to support
integration, automation, and other technical functions.

Carter Busse, CIO at
Workato, believes
IT should drive the architecture and governance models that enable business
teams to build solutions.

“To enable decentralized IT, CIOs must double down on architecture,
compliance, and security. This includes configuring the applications and
designing processes to enforce strict guardrails so lines of business can
build their own solutions, with no negative impacts on production systems.
When there is no compromise on this approach, it will mitigate many
decentralized IT concerns.”

Why is this a powerful force multiplier: IT has only so many
developers and engineers to staff the business’s technology needs, and
today, many business teams have tech-savvy employees ready to roll up their
technology sleeves. But IT teams know the best practices on architectures,
the SDLC, testing, integrations, and deployment, so the art is finding a way
to develop and manage standards.

–

The question for CIOs and IT leaders is, are we ready to give up
command-and-control, accelerate digital transformation, and focus on
establishing easy-to-follow governance guardrails?