I think one of the worst places for IT people to work is for a tech company.
Talk about being undervalued.
Often, they are providing tech services to an entitled group of people. Developers. And super users in all the customer facing teams of Sales, Service and Marketing. Because even in usually non-technical roles, the people are technical.
It is in this world that I have seen real “shadow IT”. Which is a description of people in business departments that go rogue and create their own IT tools. Buy their own applications without consulting IT. Or worse than buy, sometimes build it.
Often breaking the rules. And being proud of it.
Yet at the same time creating things that can’t really be supported. And in worse case scenarios, creating things that might not be robust in terms of security and scalability. And often creating data silos. Which I believe can lead to functionality silos.
And while technology companies are the worse offenders when it comes to shadow It, it can happen at any company. It’s a nightmare for IT teams.
So, you can’t really blame them when they are hesitant about the deployment of low-code / no-code solutions. That they think that this can open the door to shadow IT.
However, managed well, it can generate real value inside a company. It can free up the IT department to do the things that are most important. Setting up IT infrastructure that does consider security, scalability, and data policy. Likewise, it empowers the business teams to innovate on the front line. For example, it enable better workflow. An lets them create better customer experiences.
When implemented as a joint venture with IT, low-code / no-code solutions are not shadow IT. They are a huge step forward in how we transform how we use digital within our business teams to deliver to customer needs.
It’s all in the how it’s done. And how we collaborate internally.
Thoughts?
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