The rate of change

In the good old days, technology changed. (Yeah, it still changes.) But it changed at a slow rate. When computers were large, hulking beasts that filled entire rooms, changes occurred over years and were small. You might get a new FORTRAN or COBOL compiler -- but not a new language -- every half-decade or so. (FORTRAN-66 was followed by FORTRAN-77, for example.)

Today, computers get faster and more powerful every six months. (Consider the Apple iPad, with the second version released prior to a year after the first.) Microsoft has released compilers for C# in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2010 -- about one every two years. And not only do we get compilers, but we also get new languages. In 1995, Java was the new thing. In 2001, it was C#. Now we have Ruby, Python, Erlang, Haskell, Scala, Lua, and a bunch more. Not all of these will be the "next big thing", but one (or possibly more) will be.

Organizations can absorb change at a certain rate, and no faster. Each organization has its own rate. Some companies are faster than others. Larger companies take more time, since they have more people involved in decisions and more legacy applications. Small companies with fewer people and "software assets" can adopt new technologies quicker. Start-ups with a small number of employees and a few lines of code can move the quickest.

We're in a situation where technology changes faster than most companies can absorb the change. In most (big-ish) companies, managers don't really work with technology but make decisions about it. They make decisions based on their experience, which they got when they were managers-to-be and still working with technology. So managers in today's organizations think that tech works like a C++ compiler (or maybe a Java JVM), and senior managers think that tech works like a COBOL compiler and IMS database. (I imagine that MBA graduates who have no direct experience with tech believe that tech works as a series of commoditized black boxes that are replaceable at the proper cost.)

This is a big deal. If managers cannot value technology and make good judgements, then the decision-making process within companies becomes political, with different groups pushing for their positions and advocating certain directions. Solutions are selected for perceived benefits and the results can be vastly different from the desired outcome. Mistakes can be very expensive for a company, and possibly fatal to the project or the company.

So what is a company to do? One could hire managers who have deep technical knowledge and keep abreast of changes, but such managers are hard to find and hard to keep. One could create a separate team of technologists to set a technical direction for the company, but this can devolve into a special interest group within the company and create additional politics.

I think the best thing a company can do is set a general direction to keep the company technically capable, to set an expectation of all employees to be technically aware, and to reward those teams that demonstrate the ability to manage technology changes. Instead of dictating a specific solution, look for and encourage specific behaviors.