As a person with experience and background as an IT Professional, my blog at first look might seem to have an interesting title - IT Pro's becoming Agile.
'Agile' is a term I have used from the software development methodology, that promotes the development, teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle of a project.
Just as Developers are embracing the evolution of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), with the Business requiring and expecting faster iterations of an application, IT Professionals are in exactly the same boat for Infrastructure.
This blog is intended to assist and guide IT Professionals towards becoming Agile, at the same time leveraging the licensed products they have at their disposal, with a focus on the Platform and the Management of that platform. I want the reader to have a take-away from each article on how they can use the information to individually develop the technology or their skills around it, to work as a team and collaborate with Developers and Business, and to adapt to each change on the horizon.
The Business is expecting movement and turnaround for IT departments to use services such as Cloud solutions, whether it be Private, Public or Hybrid. At the same time see a return on their investment for the particular licensing agreement/s they have with Microsoft. This could be in the form of maximising product usage, Software Assurance benefits and the like…
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The Business benefits:
Each post in my blog will have this section within it, allowing an IT Professional to engage with their relevant Business. This content can be used by an IT Professional to explain/negotiate/sell or advise the Business of the benefits that will be seen by deploying the relevant technology and its feature set within their organisation.
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Why have this section you ask?…
The number one problem I have seen in almost every organization I have consulted to, is that of IT and Business not being able to speak the same language. IT struggling to explain the business value of deploying various products and their feature sets, as well as Business struggling to translate their business roadmap to IT. This all resulting in IT being the traditional cost centre it has always been!
Along with this, many IT Pro’s and Developers are not fully aware of what products they own on, or the benefits that can be derived from, the Microsoft license agreement/s that Business has signed for. On the other side of the divide, most Businesses are not fully aware of what “IT” has deployed in their environment, keeping them in the dark of the real value in their license agreement.
Amongst how-to articles on this blog, there will also be articles explaining and guiding IT Professionals on how to leverage many of the Solution Accelerators & license agreement benefits provided by Microsoft.
The first series of posts will focus on Developer/Operations, commonly known as DevOps, and for a change up, these articles will be written from the IT Pro's point of view. Just as Developers are adapting to faster release cycles for their applications or their application updates, IT Professionals need to be able to adapt at a faster pace. Not only to the changing and challenging IT landscape that Cloud is bringing in its various forms, but we have/and can also play a very key important role within the Application Lifecycle Management.
The IT landscape IS changing and moving forward at a rapid pace, however, it is a prime opportunity for IT Professionals to embrace these movements and build up to showing REAL value back to Business, for all the investment they have made.
To ensure this blog stay relevant and timeous, I encourage you as a reader to feedback on articles posted here, as well as on any IT infrastructure movements you are currently going through. Thus ensuring we all move towards becoming as Agile as possible…
Morgan
@morgan_msft