Let me start with a definition. Agility in IT means being skilled in the use of a set of techniques that enable you to size up situations and develop effective solutions faster and cheaper than others thought possible. I call these the core techniques, and I've talked about them in earlier columns, including "Just a Handful of Techniques" [May 2, 2005].
I've practiced and applied them for years. My value in the job market is to a large extent determined by how skillfully I use them to get things done for people who hire me. Basically, I'm paid to be agile. My opportunity is to use agility to get things done for a lot of people. By practicing IT agility, I'll be in constant demand. Everywhere I look, companies need systems to help them get things done.
My ability to take what I've done before and apply it in a new setting raises a question. "Well," people ask, "if you build a system for Company X, how can you build a system like it for another company without divulging proprietary information?" I'll illustrate the answer with a story.
In college, I studied architecture. One day in design studio, our professor told us about the architect who built the Taj Mahal. To honor his late wife, the emperor Shah Jahan wanted a monumental mausoleum of incomparable beauty and grandeur. He hired a great architect, who applied his skills to the situation. We all know the architect succeeded brilliantly. The emperor was very pleased but was determined that no one else would have a building like the Taj Mahal. According to legend, he had the architect blinded.
Our professor then asked us what the emperor had done wrong, bearing in mind that it was entirely within his rights to exercise that kind of control over his subjects. The answer is that the emperor confused the skill of the architect with the building those skills produced. The emperor need not have worried. A good architect wouldn't build another Taj Mahal.
This is because every client has different needs, and good architects use their skills to create buildings uniquely suited to each client. Most buildings have four walls and a roof, yet they are clearly not the same. By analogy, most systems are built with standard components like databases, Web pages, packaged software and programming languages. But how they are combined to do what they do is unique and proprietary to each individual client. The proprietary designs of one client are not what another one needs. Architects and system builders reuse their skills and techniques; they do not need to reuse proprietary information.
Anyone can buy any collection of hardware and software, so the real value lies in the how skillfully it is used. The more skilled you are with the core techniques, the more agile you become and the more valuable your services are to people who need to get things done. This is why IT folks working on reinventing themselves might consider joining the "Agility Corps," which is what I'm calling the IT-business operations experts who successfully apply combinations of the six core techniques to deliver quick, 80 percent solutions to business problems. I'll talk more about this next month.
Michael H. Hugos is a CIO at large, author and speaker. His books include Essentials of Supply Chain Management and Building the Real-Time Enterprise: An Executive Briefing (both published by John Wiley & Sons). He can be reached at mhugos@yahoo.com.