Thinking about Bimodal IT – the trick to blending legacy and innovation
Daniel Iversen
Gartner came up with the term “Bimodal IT” to describe the scenario in which the CIO and other tech executives handle the integration of an existing, predictable, tech infrastructure and streams of work with one of a more exploratory, emergent stream of contemporary software, trends and devices, commonly characterised as bring-your-own (BYOD/BYOA etc). And as we know, some of these technologies, are at times even brought into the enterprise by the employees themselves in order to enable better productivity in their work (via Shadow IT etc).
Gartner’s definition emphasised the bifurcated nature of the concept, a dual Mode 1 and Mode 2 model that brings to mind the old spinning plates trick, but at different speeds:
Bimodal IT is the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.
But running an IT department along the lines of two separate streams is complex and more than likely increasingly impractical.
The flexible approach to resource allocation and management dictates that a silo model in which two separate teams look after the two modes is probably sustainable, but hardly conducive to moving an enterprise forward to engaging with agile and creative solutions in a world of digital disruption.
Rather than thinking of Bimodal IT as a fixed blueprint for resource allocation and management, it’s better to view it as a theoretical lens through which to think about the matters of adoption, integration, implementation, risk and innovation.
The other thing to remember is that even IT infrastructure itself is not immutable and impervious to change: the change may sometimes seem glacial but it is there. For IT infrastructure to better serve its purposes, there has to be a window through which light can stream, a portal for regeneration and growth.
We only have to think about the shift we have seen in the past five years in how cloud computing has dramatically changed the way enterprise infrastructure is maintained and operated. This is innovation reshaping infrastructure, and a reminder that we are constantly upgrading our systems and processes, even if it doesn’t always seem that obvious.
Infrastructure has to be part of the innovation discussion and process because it is an integral part of any enterprise. To shunt it off into a separate stream is to close it off from innovation. This could be seriously detrimental to any enterprise because the effective performance of infrastructure systems underpin so many of the revenue drivers of an enterprise.
In examining the premise of Bimodal IT as a model for enterprise infrastructure management, a recent Forrester report labelled it as “a two-class system that adds more front-end and back-end silos of complexity”, which was counterproductive for any company looking to adopt and adapt to new ways of doing things.
There is a strong element of truth to this view; which is why Bimodal IT is better viewed as a theoretical lens that can help us appreciate the challenges faced by IT departments; but in saying that, it’s also important to recognise the Bimodal nature of many enterprise IT environments is manifested in the practical division of tasks and resources between “traditional” infrastructure and “agile” projects – some teams work on infrastructure and legacy issues, others on development.
But to formalise this practical division into Mode 1 and Mode 2 presents a cultural issue as well, especially if an enterprise is keen on enhancing collaboration between teams and employees rather than fortifying artificial silos.
This is one of the points raised by Jez Humble in his blog post critiquing Bimodal IT. Humble is a developer and the co-author of several books the book Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale.
Humble specifically identifies three flaws in the Bimodal IT model: that it is “reductionist”; Mode 1 and Mode 2 streams are “almost always coupled”; and what he terms the most important flaw, which is that “Gartner’s model rests on a false assumption that is still pervasive in our industry: that we must trade off responsiveness against reliability.”
He says the DevOps and Continuous Delivery movement has created the type of paradigm shift that aspires to fast quality IT delivery byencompasses not only the agile systems of engagement but also the more complex systems of record:
“The conventional wisdom is that if we make changes to our products and services faster and more frequently, we will reduce their stability, increase our costs, and compromise on quality.
This assumption is wrong.”
So Bimodal IT does provide us with a theoretical lens but its practical scope is trumped by the need to implement agile processes across the spectrum of IT enterprise, from “infrastructure” through to consumer-facing applications. It means we can’t shy away from the technological, as well as cultural, advances that have been made by DevOps, continuous delivery etc. because to do so would be shirking our responsibility to strengthen and improve IT and the entire business in the long term.