Does your organization use Agile project management?  Are you deploying new capabilities on very short intervals to your infrastructure?   Does your organization use middle-ware ‘service’ layer to help standardize your software product line? Is your organization such that this middleware is provided by a separate team?

It may behoove you to ensure there is compliance with time-tested documentation and proper change control.  Any middleware subsystems created as components used on new technologies but are not well documented, packaged, or maintained may suffer in the future and negate the benefit of being componentized.  This is “technical debt” that eventually will fall upon your organization.  All systems that use this middleware will be tied to a system that eventually will be unable to be updated unless the talent that created them are keep employed. This technical debt can bring down a company with a ‘market leading product’ quickly when the competition brings a new product to market.  New products can industrialize your organization’s product.  Your organization is quickly put into the position of having a legacy product, and management will need to invest heavily to bring your product up to the level and quickly to the new generation of product.

I follow gardeviance’s blog pretty regularly because he is the only source I have found insightful in IT leadership and how prepared organizations are for future success. This blog is gold for any CIO.

It is worth the investment in time to read. You may want to reserve time to read related content, but once you do he brings a unique perspective on new technologies coming to market, such as Amazon’s dash button.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.