adaptiman.com

Category: Higher Ed IT

  • Low Code to No Code

    Low Code to No Code

    For several years, I’ve been hearing about low-code platforms. These are usually web-based tools such as QuickBase, Appian, and others that focus mainly on the professional developer market and promise to speed up the development process. The disruption created by this model of Software Defined Everything (SDX) has become increasingly evident. But up to now, I’ve thought that our professional developers have been safe. We are still using more traditional platforms like DotNet and Python to develop web-based apps.

    Now I’m hearing about no-code platforms that are targeting non-professional application developers – so-called “citizen coders.” For example Techcrunch published an article today on Zeroqode, an up-and-coming no-code vendor. At CES this week, we’ve also seen an explosion of AI driven bots that are doing all kinds of things. It is these two disruptive factors, low code/no code and AI, that lead me to believe we may have reached a tipping point in software development. I think the nature of our profession is going to dramatically change in the next few years, traditional programming will becoming increasingly obsolete, and our skillset as IT professionals will continue to shift toward professional services – that is, translating the needs of  our customers into technology solutions through project management, business analysis, and business relationship management. This is the part they don’t understand very well, and our professional experience can be used to guide them. As we see a new generation of citizen coders that have little formal training in development, where does that leave the professionals?

  • DevOps and Higher Ed

    DevOps and Higher Ed

    A colleague of mine, who is another division-level IT manager, and I are teaching a course in the fall. The course is a senior level elective that focuses on special topics in technology management. Cool – right up our alley. We were given freedom to pick the topic, and of course we chose DevOps. You may have heard of it. It has become trendy is recent years, but I think it will prove to be more than a passing fad. You see, DevOps tries to solve problems, not primarily with technology, but rather with organizational functioning and communication.

    The traditional definition of DevOps describes the intersection of communication and automation between IT development, operations and quality assurance. While these three areas are classically highlighted as the main areas of focus, in truth, DevOps is a set of principles for all of the IT disciplines. Recent sources have described DevOps as a philosophy for approaching IT work based upon four pillars; collaboration, affinity, tools, and scaling (cf. Davis & Daniels, 2016. Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale). More accurately, I think of DevOps as an organizational culture. Sure, part of DevOps is tools that enhance automation, communication, and collaboration. In fact, most people mistakenly talk about how to “do DevOps” and usually focus on tools. But what I find extremely useful is the push to break down organizational silos and embrace shared responsibility and authority across the organization.

    Here’s the interesting part. As we have been trying to introduce DevOps into the work that we do here at the big school, we are finding that the organizational structure of a large Tier 1 University (or most any other higher education institution for that matter) is the antithesis of a DevOps culture. Higher education embraces vertical structures of organization and authority, delineated responsibility, demarcated services, territorial imbroglios, and  finger-pointing when things go south. In IT, we see this among our IT organizations, between us and our customers, and even between organizations with a common purpose like academic colleges.

    That is why I think DevOps is so important for Higher Ed IT. It gives us a framework to finally address some of the serious shortcomings of our environments in a way that will prove our worth to the academy. If we can only get over our historical cultures and shift our thinking, I think we can take Higher Ed IT to the next level using principles of DevOps.