Technology organizations used to have two main functions: Development on one side and Operations on the other.
Development was in charge of building, integrating, and customizing systems. People used to call it Application Development. They now often call it Engineering.
And Operations was in charge of the environment to run those systems: hardware, networking, 24×7 operations—that sort of thing.
Each area has seen major changes over the last 15 years, most notably with the birth of Agile (for Development) and Cloud Computing (for Operations), and an increasing overlap between Development and Operations (DevOps).
This post draws parallels between Agile and Cloud; after all, both are meant to help you do things better, faster, cheaper.
This post also looks at what Agile and Cloud mean for startups and big companies.
Agile and Cloud for startups
Agile and Cloud are not only obvious choices for startups, they essentially enable startups.
Put another way, Agile (with concepts like minimum-viable-product and fail-fast) and Cloud (with on-demand computing resources from providers like Amazon Web Services) are no-brainers for startups.
As a startup, you couldn’t do it the old way anyway, because you simply don’t have time and money for long-drawn-out projects.
Agile and Cloud for big companies
For big companies, Agile and Cloud are a different story.
These days, big companies have come to realize that you should do your best to “be agile” and “move to the cloud.” But this realization has been followed by execution challenges.
Sure, a lot of effort has been put into transforming large organizations to be Agile: so was born “Agile at scale.”
And a lot of effort has been put into helping large organizations go to the Cloud: so was born “private Cloud.”
These types of endeavor, though, while admirable in their own right, generally prove to be conservative measures (not to say oxymorons) that increase complexity and rob companies of the big benefits that Agile and Cloud can bring.
Agile and Cloud for bold companies
As a big company, while you continue with your traditional organization and your legacy systems, there is a more radical path you can take:
Start thinking of yourself as a venture capital firm running a portfolio of startups.
Get started with a piece of new or existing business, and go after it with a startup team, as a startup would.
And then, one “startup” at a time, use Agile and Cloud the way they were meant to be used: go native and go all in.
As with any startup, the key to success is people. Go with the right people, enable them, trust them, and give them ownership in the venture.
Be bold and do it: go all in! Do it, or struggle to attract top talent and see many of your best people move on to do it elsewhere.
