Overcoming IT Complexity

Chapter 5. Creating Your Technology Investment Framework

As you manage your way through building and operating your IT infrastructure, you make decisions that impact which areas of your applications and infrastructure you invest in. The factors that influence your investment decisions are beyond the scope of this book, but it’s important to be aware of their effect on the size and complexity of your overall system.

As a company is built, maintained, and grown, all the investments it makes will fit into a specific framework that will either enable the business or work against the business. The goal is to focus as much investment—money and energy—on the things that give the business the return on investment it requires, and as little as possible on the things that, while they might be necessary to operate the business, are not strategic to its operation.

Technology Investment Framework Categories

Technology investments vary depending on the type of organization. From a framework perspective, the investments will inevitably fall into one of three categories:

Sustaining

These investments keep your company moving. They include investing in infrastructure—such as communications technologies (email, phone), office space, and physical infrastructure—financial management and control, and human resources.

Disruptive

These investments are designed to build and grow your business. This might include developing new product ideas, building new features for existing products, or expanding ...