Paradigm Shift in IT Team Makeup?
- Darcy Patten
- Apr 18, 2018
- 2 min read
I am days away from the 25th anniversary of my college graduation from NAIT, in Computer Systems Technology. It has been an interesting journey, one that has taken me to places such as Ottawa, Sacramento and Regina working with companies like Accenture, IBM and Fujitsu. I have met amazing people, worked on cool projects and gained a little knowledge along the way.
One of the constants that I can always depend upon is the roles necessary to implement a successful system. We need the project manager to guide the team, budget and schedule. The business analyst makes sure we are building what the client needs, the developer builds the system with their technology wizardry. Of course you need an architect to make sure the application blueprint supports scaling and performs well. Throw in testers, front end designers, infrastructure teams and DBAs and you have all the skill needed to knock the delivery of a spanky new application out of the park. Rinse and repeat, right?? Well, actually.....not anymore.
Two and a half years ago, I launched a digital service that utilized a private cloud, low code application platform. This has radically altered my perspective of the team I need to deliver kick ass projects. UX designer, no longer, the platform comes with a predefined user interface. Infrastructure teams - ummmm no, it is a cloud offering, we don't have to worry about that. Well, we still need the developer don't we.....scratch that, systems are built via configuration using the interface provided by the platform. So who is the project manager going to lead? Actually, I am not sure we even need that PM anymore.
You see, my team is mostly made up of technical business analysts. They can data model, understand logic to build business rules and most importantly, have the capability to understand the clients business problem so as to design a system within the boundaries of the platform to solve that problem. With each team member being a self starter and the client driving scope prioritization, there is little left to manage. Even weekly status meetings are disappearing because the client is getting multiple daily updates through an agile approach.
Okay, okay, occasionally we extend the platform with custom code that requires a developer or we need to interface with another platform that requires an architect, however they make up 2 of my 11 person team with no PM in sight. Even today, on paper, it doesn't make any sense, but it works and it works brilliantly. The power of a low code platform with an agile, autonomous team is absolutely, undeniably the future of IT delivery. Why not join me on the dark side and find out!
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