What happened to the concept of Quality?
In the old days of IT (or Computer Science, as I believe it was once called), the main practitioners were from an engineering background or civil service background. The idea of procedures and processes were pre-eminent.
Such was the importance of computing power that detailed design, walkthrough and analysis was used before people were let loose to cut code, or to implement as system.
This, in turn, led to the importance of processes and controls, and to the so-called Mainframe mentality. It was alleged that it took years for anything to be done on a mainframe, which was one of the justifications for the later Client-Server revolution (remember that?) and the rise of midrange systems (remember them?) which were said to be easier to deploy and implement.
Despite a period when the term Software Engineering was used, the cultural norms have moved towards the world of Agile Programming, Extreme Programming, Prototyping etc.
In the world of Infrastructure, there has been a rush to catch up as the Infrastructure desperately tries to keep pace with the rush of new Applications being thrown over the wall onto it.
In the meantime, we now have chaotic organisations, where management processes (control of change, scheduling of activities, etc.) are equally Agile (or disorganised, depending upon your point of view).
So where are we now?
Some organisations I have seen have Chaotic Programming, Chaotic Infrastructure Management and Chaotic Team and Processes.
Is this the best way to run Information Technology?
Sometimes I think not.
Yes, we must be agile and responsive to the business.
But if we cave in to the pressures for unstructured and ungoverned change we will be creating issues for those that follow us in the IT world.
For many, who live as contractors, this is not an issue; the next contract is around the corner, and someone else can pick up the pieces. Even CIOs are not immune to this short-termism.
Maybe it's time to take a longer term, more responsible view of the way we do things?
