Cape Town, 13 May 2016
In 1968 the game of tennis was transformed when most world-class tennis tournaments first allowed professional players as well as amateurs to enter - prior to this it was an amateur game. In IT we are witnessing the inverse: a sector mostly reserved for the professionals is opening up to the 'amateurs', says Martilene Orffer, MD and CEO of OPENCOLLAB.
In higher education the concept of 'openness' has become the norm over the past number of years, for example Open Educational Resources, Open Research, Open Data, Open Access, Open Science, to name but a few. Add to this the amazing growth and adoption of open source solutions in recent years.
Recently, numerous conferences (UCISA in Manchester, UK; Apereo South Africa), Webinars (NWU eResearch Webinar) and articles (see references below) have underlined the predictions that we are being ushered into a new era of 'openness', i.e: 'amateurs' developing applications that will be used alongside enterprise applications developed by the 'professionals'.
The definition of 'amateur' in this case is people outside of traditional institutional IT - some very young, some in unconventional groups - engaging in developing micro apps. This group may not be 'amateurs' at all - these are people who grew up with laptops, tablets, smartphones; have been exposed to numerous solutions on all kinds of platforms - they understand the new generation software user. The first prize for the creators of these 'amateur' apps may be to have these apps accepted in the broader institutional application ecosystem. Perhaps even to be integrated with institutional data and ERP or other solutions. These developers are challenging seasoned IT departments to a paradigm shift - is IT just for IT?
Gartner Research's bimodal IT framework is described as the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasising safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasising agility and speed. This new era of 'amateur' app development can potentially be categorised into Mode 2 (it may not be exactly what Gartner intended though). In this practice 'coherent ' (forming a unified whole) remains key.
'Open' pluggable architectures, with very definite security layers and clear guidelines around institutional standards, change management, data security, policies and regulations, will be needed to accommodate the HOW of allowing non-IT developed apps into the institutional solutions ecosystem. Institutional IT will define the governance around these activities and will also manage the coherent platform that will allow 'open' access to institutional services and data. Providing a type of backend as a service layer for the institution will be core in addressing the challenges mentioned above and assist in opening up institutional services to the 'unconventional software developer'.
One of the challenges that remains is that of sustainability. This is an all new debate, but let's start off by asking this: if an app passes all the criteria stipulated by the institution, is it the app or the data the app gathers and creates that needs to be sustained in the institutional ecosystem in the longer term? Example: When a new system replaces an old one at the institution, project implementation strategy may see legacy data being migrated, implying that data has a longer lifespan than applications and thus bringing into question what the most important is to sustain: data or application.
Bring your own app (BYOA) and institutional app stores may be the next evolution to bring your own device (BYOD).
https://www.opencollab.co.za/custom-development/
References
* Tennis - The Open Era http://tennis.about.com/od/basicprotoursglossary/g/defopenera.htm
* Gartner BI Modal IT: http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/bimodal/
* Top 10 IT Issues in Higher Education - CIO Point of View http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vala-afshar/top-10-it-issues-in-highe_b_9655138.html
"Divest - Higher education IT organisations are divesting of locally optimised and delivered technologies, architectures, and processes and moving to standardized, and cloud-based services and architectures.
Reinvest - Institutions are reinvesting in key areas to ensure readiness to manage a re-architected IT function and support mission differentiation with IT.
Differentiate - Colleges and universities are using IT as a strategic differentiator to enhance the institution's particular culture, missions, and strategies, particularly in analytics and in teaching and learning."
* A 'design-thinking' approach to governing the future http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/275627-a-design-thinking-approach-to-governing-the-future?utm_content=buffer89e13&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
"..organisations are starting to realise the benefits of digital transformation to reinvent the citizen experience in the form of digital services tailored to individual needs. However, public service leaders are finding that as they move further into the digital age, they need to re-orient their internal organisations around this paradigm shift, or their investments in digital are likely to fail. This is where Design Thinking comes into play."
* The Existential Question Facing the Auto Industry https://hbr.org/2016/04/the-existential-question-facing-the-auto-industry
"They deliberately separate out innovation units that are charged with disrupting the status quo from those parts of the business that focus on leading in core markets. They consistently reinvent themselves.
Next, they need to connect - but keep separate - their new ventures from their core businesses so that they have assets but none of the liabilities that would slow them down."
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