Agility: Competing and Winning in a Tech-Savvy Marketplace

Chapter 3. OPTIMIZING FOR AGILITY: A DIFFERENT WAY TO VIEW YOUR BUSINESS

The right plan, the right people, the right data, and the right tools are all components of a successful business. All of these factors organized in the right way allow a company to optimize for agility. The IT infrastructure and the capabilities it delivers play a major part in how the pieces come together. IT can either help or seriously hinder any organization.

The IT team has arguably a tough balancing act. It needs to deliver a strategic, coordinated, mobile, and flexible data-crunching beast of an infrastructure to an organization—oh yes, it also needs to be easy to use for the business organization it supports—while facing its own intense pressures in managing cost, resources, and complexity.

As IT teams develop infrastructure plans, regardless of business sector and organization size, several trends impact their work:

• There is a stronger emphasis on teamwork. Better decisions and results come from sharing expertise, but technology often has been a barrier in helping people work together efficiently. Geographical, organizational, or technical boundaries limit the ability to build or self-organize into teams. Collaboration and communication tools on the PC have revolutionized how people work together.

• The new social networking tools take teamwork to a whole new level. The Millennials or Gen Y'ers who are now entering the workforce grew up with technology and an Internet connection. They connect and collaborate ...