Manage increased complexity by building an IoT war room, says Jenny Beresford from Gartner.
Technologists are, at heart, today’s explorers and inventors, venturing into wild digital frontiers. As the Internet of Things (IoT) evolves, IT leaders are discovering that it is not an end game but a beginning: The IoT is a launch pad for infinite new forms of digital business and social connection.
The IoT will expand rapidly and extensively, continually surfacing novel and unforeseen opportunities and threats. This calls for a new type of CIO, a ‘CIO of Everything’ who can radically adapt the vision, decision making, and capabilities to orchestrate an IoT world.
Enterprises will approach the IoT from different angles — perhaps as consumers of data, or as passive contributors of data, or as active IoT ecosystem leaders bringing new product and intelligence to market. Whatever the point of entry – the ability to act with speed, imagination and confidence are the qualities required of the CIO of Everything.
They will be expected to own, respond to, and resolve the waves of new and unanticipated demands, considerations and issues that the IoT will generate on a daily basis.
CIOs need to decide today what additional capabilities and resources they need as they cultivate the enterprise’s IoT efforts — both in the short and long term — and start acquiring them without delay.
Develop an IoT war room
Operating in an IoT world requires planning for the best outcomes, but also preparing for the worst. Central to this, CIOs leading IoT adoption should create a virtual ‘IoT war room’ to focus attention on the unfolding future. The war room consists of a team of business and technology minds to brainstorm the situation and create an enterprise IoT strategy and roadmap to guide the CEO, C-level peers and technology teams toward a vision of how the enterprise wants to participate in the IoT world.
The strategy will provide a ‘constitution’ with aspirations and guiding principles. The roadmap must be lightweight, flexible, options-based, and designed to be as dynamic as the IoT itself. It will inevitably change direction frequently, and priorities will shift as IoT technologies and products evolve, markets and players come and go, and customers decide how connected they wish to be.
Map and monitor critical IoT domains
IoT-generated data will never be finite, stable or complete. So creating and maintaining an accurate map of the enterprise’s critical IoT domains and connected endpoints needs to be done from the outset. A visual dashboard or monitoring system with a real-time view of the continual flow and growth of IoT involvement can help with this.
Build a dedicated IoT team for the enterprise
A dedicated IoT team needs to be skilled in designing, mapping, reading, growing and maintaining the enterprise’s IoT internal domains and external products.
The CIO will need a curious, entrepreneurial and strategic-thinking IoT-focused team able to work with abstraction and unprecedented levels of complexity, and to anticipate opportunities and threats quickly as industry, market conditions and technologies change. Brainstorming sessions will be needed with IT leaders and forward-thinking business leaders and product owners to develop a profile of the talent and competencies needed to form and develop this new pivotal team.
Jenny Beresford is Research Director at Gartner, the trusted and valuable partner for more than 11,000 enterprises in 100 countries worldwide.
