Modern Work, some AI stuff and other ramblings!
I thought that this would be a good first ‘new’ post about this subject, mainly since I changed my blog’s name. Smooth, eh?
I’ve been in the Modern Work industry for almost 18 years. It mostly sits alongside Unified Communications (what I was/am/still in with a change), businesses/providers and pro-services had to adapt to a mix of different technologies to incorporate into their offering, and it all became under one roof. It’s still a general term, but it encapsulates most things in the new market.
My journey started with internal operations, data centre racking and all the other management of a company’s infrastructure, usually contained on a few servers with messy cabling that everyone seemed to ignore. In a way, it was easier to control; you had physical access at any time of the day, and the only two things you had to worry about were a power outage or a hard drive failure; the rest just fell into place, and between a good team of people, most things just worked!
Everything started to change when the powers of the solution world (Microsoft mainly) threw curve balls around, taking everything to the cloud. To begin with, all the on-prem solutions in place got pitched a ‘hybrid’ model, this still allowed partial control of your data and solutions locally but beginning to leverage the overarching move to the cloud; it wasn’t pretty and where infrastructure or solutions were too grounded locally, or the lack of understanding financially/technically, it was quite a ride to consult for customers wanting to adopt the whole feature sets – bit of a mess.
It was a turning point for what I saw, mainly due to the changes that came with it. It was all very new, and a deep technical understanding was still needed, but the issue that presented itself was the time factor, it was running out; following the years that pushed on, it was a broader marketing strategy to move to the cloud in general, then the ‘new normal’ set in, a state where cloud solutions were the first pitch talked about generally, and then you had also the trend-setting which came along with it so inevitably you had a market that was being dominated by the providers using these ways of bringing companies up to the new level of technology, cloud based, this happened fast with lack of understanding, clients I was working with could not see that long-term strategy and they were still keeping things on-premise as long as possible.
I see this with AI, there are some significant benefits with it though, and the way to try and bring this in is to begin with enumeration, once you can enumerate a solution or a problem then seeing how AI can help with these is a great stepping stone.
I’ve always believed in understanding why technology should be used, before using it (sounds easy, but it doesn’t happen).
It’s a difficult situation when we try following a blind trend, this can become problematic when costings / finance / resources come into it so I’m just going to ramble with highlighting some of the ways of doing things, in my eyes, below!
This is my personal approach, I found it works for my style, and is pretty rational, I also like to talk (can you tell?), this helps when I’m trying to work out a solution for a customer…
Understand the Requirement
Being a consultant, architect and engineer (pretty sure they’re all the same thing), this one resonates with what I do; one of the most significant issues I see when looking for a product or solution for someone is not fully understanding the requirement, for me, the best way to do this is open, honest and transparent with what feedback you’re getting from your business around you, many times I have seen others go into a environment and not understand why they need the new technology, especially AI, it’s all fresh and new and something that has been going on for a while in general and is how I feel we should approach this new era.
Listen to your teams/staff.
I’ve found that the most significant source of information and requirement gathering is the physical users of the products; one thing we should all avoid is placing a new piece of technology without the end-users feedback.
I’m a big fan of going to see the ‘use in action’ sit down, but also gathering the daily troubles of what causes a lack in productivity; the primary source of information comes from the boots on the ground, having external teams away from these use cases can cause confusion when it’s implemented.
Implement cautiously (if you can)
No one likes change, especially individuals who have formed their process or culture.
I’m a strong advocate of starting small and building confidence in the cultural changes technology can bring.
This is especially true when implementing new things like AI. Change can be unsettling, especially for those who have established their foundation. However, by starting small and adjusting the requirement without too many disruptions, you/me/them can manage the adoption effectively and build confidence in the new assistance tools it can bring alongside.
I’ll discuss some examples of AI in another article, as it deserves one on its own, not just in my field, but a generic view of how it can impact everything I have said above. It’s a moving trend, and can have some real positive effects.
The information above helps me move this next change into a well-defined delivery!
I told you it was a ramble!
Quick Note: I use Grammarly to avoid falling into a spiral of fancy words and missing punctuation with my fast fingers. Hopefully, it doesn’t stand out too much!
Ben