Shadow IT is "an abomination", but the IT department can't just ignore change, agree UK CIOs

"We're not the high priests in the temple" warns IT leader

Shadow IT is "an abomination", but nevertheless IT needs to come up with more creative ways to "hold the line" in a business world that demands flexibility.

These are the thoughts of UK CIOs, who gathered together to discuss digital transformation at last week's Computing IT Leaders Dining Club, and whose thoughts we can share in an anonymised fashion due to the strict Chatham House Rules of the evening.

They would perhaps have been horrified to hear of recent Computing research which revealed that six per cent of all IT procurement in the UK is made on an ad hoc, or 'shadow' basis.

One CIO of a large retail firm commented that a company "can't present an intregrated customer proposition or protect interconnected security" unless it has "the ability to control the whole thing".

"But you're right," said the CIO.

"In the modern world, with threats that we have and the customer challenges we have, that's imperative. But that brings the requirement to be as responsive and agile and flexibile as you possibly can."

However, at the same time, the CIO discussed the necessity to "hold the line", trusting in one's own instincts to look forward while maintaining control.

"You know when you're right - shadow IT functions spring up because [employees] feel that - rightly or wrongly - the IT function's not good enough. And they are an abomination."

A representative of software solutions firm Workday, who hosted the event in association with Computing, commented that IT "now has more governance and control than it did 10 years ago," reflecting the ever-changing role of the CIO.

The retail CIO agreed, but reminded attendees that the rock and a hard place for many CIOs now is the expectation to move fast and stay still simultaneously.

"Half the time, the board is encouraging you to move quickly, and the other half of the time it's encouraging you to lock everything down."

"Genuius programmers"

An IT director of a large pharmaceutical company volunteered that "increasingly IT literate kids" may be able to facilitate these changes by being self-starters and reimagining such business conflicts as that just discussed. However, the CTO of a large insurance firm disagreed, spelling out a future in which young "genius programmers" may lack the discipline of their forebears, and will need to once again learn to live within systems of delivery and practice in order to match the achievements of the generation before.

"My son called me up the other day from Oxford [University] with a problem he was having in Python," explained the CTO.

Shadow IT is "an abomination", but the IT department can't just ignore change, agree UK CIOs

"We're not the high priests in the temple" warns IT leader

"He's a ‘genius programmer', but may lack the basic IT training needed to function in the modern world... he knows about the object-oriented algorithm and how to write a decent bit of code, but in that particular moment of time he didn't understand the environment in which he was tying to run that piece of code - the concepts of firewalls or being inside the Oxford environment.

"What he was trying to to was very obvious to me - I said either you've got a mistake in your code, or you've got a proxy problem. Two hours later, when he'd solved it, he said we should go into business together!"

The lesson the CTO took away from this conversation was that IT is going to have to continue being delivered "in some sort of governened framework, otherwise you end up with chaos".

"And that doesn't mean that we're the high priests in the temple looking after the great computer like it used to be - it's more that the people who designed these very clever devices in our pockets who came through chaotic bedroom programming, they [also] came through a strong process of engineering principles.

"You can't build a BMW engine unless less you follow the blueprint," he concluded.
While nobody had any particular answers to this quandary, the key takeaway is that a balanced appreciation of rules and the lunatic fringe is going to be the way forward for the next generation of IT pros. And that includes respecting the existing infrastructure and cutting down on that "abomination" of shadow IT when at all possible.