maybe its a hobby of yours to have the hottest rod on the block? you spend countless hours and dollars adorning your rod with improvements and decorations. i mean if thats what floats your boat and gives your foot print purpose then you allocate enough resources to constantly put you in a position of having the biggest and prettiest hot rod on the planet.

from experience, something i know to be true is that every artificial system put in place still isn’t intuitive to the needs of their human counterparts needs. sure you can give it rules and the power to base some decisions on the result of a mathematical formula. barring unique situations aside most of the IT universe requires constant intervention and meticulous care on an enterprise as well as granular level. the constant massaging aids in revolution as well as evolution which over time ingrains itself into a culture revolving around growing profitability and stability for the greater good of the unit.

the trick is to integrate an enterprise level concept into a format that can be easily understood and utilized by the majority. the enterprise concept is simple, this is the information you want to put in and then create a common method for pulling the information out and slicing it for display in beautiful flash charts that move and spin in pretty bright colors. the user level can be more complex with the more inexperienced and lazy users being the firewall rule holding up development traffic and sending version release times into gray space. the secret to the magic trick? there isn’t a magic trick. success in the world of software development pours down from a need into marshaling yard where your gap man can organize the chaos of ideas and formulate a tetris strategy to position all the pieces. with a direction firmed up the gap guy begins sending instructions to his teams to build and move all the necessary blocks into position. with a firm set of guidelines and the spirit of the projects vision clearly in place the blocks are secured and connected to bridge a mash up of technologies together resulting in the core product. at this point the solution can be examined, utilized to be scrutinized to produce the point of this article, the constant evolution of improvements to the core functions while not interrupting the solutions usefulness.

the information age is constantly evolving and unlike other historical ages, i don’t believe will outlive its reason to exist (barring a giant extinction level meteor). the development curve for technology is off the charts and we have only brushed away the outer layer of what, how and how much and at what speed can we share this information.

the moral of this story is that having your information systems on autopilot is okay on those long trans continental or oceanic flights but your sure as heck fire want a real pilot watching vigilantly over the controls, instruments and alerts you just can’t wrap your head around. many times the owner of the jet would rather say i want to go to milwaukee today than hop in the left seat and grab the throttles. he counts on the pilot to combine experience with calculated risk to get him to his destinations in a reasonable time. which of course leads to the reason your arrival can be delayed. weather is a great analogy for IT, sometimes the weather doesn’t affect your progress at all. however many times even moderate weather on the horizon can affect how efficiently you can travel. often times the weather patterns can be unpredictable and clearly outside your control. so you develop work arounds and contingency to exist but often are not straight point to point solutions. this is exactly the point you don’t rely on your autopilot rather empower the seasoned and experienced pilot to find the most efficient route through the weather. and give him the time and tools to do it.