In my last post I talked about APIs, whether they are really a new technology, and how to avoid being swept up in the hype surrounding them. In this post, I'll go over the important principles of software engineering and deployment that you should review if you plan on buying and implementing an API. 

Step 1: Self Assess

If you are interested in seeing what a managed services provider can do for your organization it is best practice to first conduct a self-assessment of your current IT capability. This will allow you to compare your internal cost and quality to a provider's offering.

Many organizations who want to migrate to a new, comprehensive operational system try a ‘big bang’ approach. This approach to business transformation usually proves unsuccessful. Most ‘big bang’ projects fail for multiple reasons such as:

• The gap between the evolved complexity of existing systems and the new system (out of the box) is too large.
• However innately sophisticated it is (e.g. SAP), the new system almost always lacks the matured, business-specific capabilities of existing systems (if put into production, the new system would develop these capabilities over time). 
• Timing of migration is a very difficult and complex topic of its own. How to create a workable migration plan is usually not well understood, particularly with respect to comprehensive reporting for areas such as sales, marketing and finance.
• The stress of learning a new large scale system while maintaining the current one overwhelms personnel resources. This can cause errors in current production, the correcting of which pulls resources off the new system development causing further migration delays. 
  

The solution?

Company A: Classic IT Service

Twenty some odd years after the first web page was published, it's pretty evident how pervasive digital interactions have become.  Walking down any urban street at lunch requires dodging pedestrians preoccupied with their smartphone.  

If we accept this as the new normal, how do organizations respond and create lasting value with something more than mere digital substitution?  Developing your digital edge, and capitalizing on it, means exploiting pervasive digital connections between systems, people, places and things but how do you avoid letting your digital business strategy become a digital tragedy?