What “I.T.” Really MeansA Normalized View

One main idea sets this discussion apart from the usual ones about IT.

Most IT discussions overall focus on the information; and, most of the newest discussions focus on Users of IT (whether the user is a person or a machine).

Our discussion of IT is about neither information-centric IT nor User-centric IT. Instead, it is about IT’s role in Processing.

The historical evolution of Processing is the topic that addresses the creation of both “progress” and “value” in what would otherwise be a pre-scientific world of coincidence, myth, and natural law.

Our current era most strongly associates processing with IT.

However, the singularity of “IT” is not about a thing or a place in time. Instead it is about a relationship.

The term “Information Technology” has always been a contraction of the phrase “technology for automated processing of information”.

Without the contraction, asking questions such as “what is the future of IT?” naturally requires looking at several different issues and the relationships between them: automation changes, information changes, and technology changes.

We are pretty good at tracking any modifications that occur in those terms. But part of a basic understanding of “IT” is that it is just a dimension or orientation within a larger constellation of critical factors of Processing.

The high-level view of processing shown here gives a consistent way to make observations and organize discussions about current processing – in terms of the most

typical aspects of a process and the most typical influences on and among those aspects.

©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

In the high-level view, every aspect is always seen.

All aspects have an influence on some of the other aspects.

The strength of the respective influences does not rule them in or out of the picture. Instead, the key feature to observe is the type of influence.

Information and Technology are separately positioned aspects within the view.

Together, as seen in the view, “IT” carries about 50% of the responsibility for processing, while having no other primary responsibility of its own.

However, in effect, “IT” exists only as a relationship between the two.

The connection between information and technology is a combination of several variable influences.

External influences include four fundamental factors that are not themselves “about” IT but instead are basic, characteristic, creative activities of production. (Communication, invention, development and labor)

As an influence on Processing:• communications produces information as Intelligence;• invention produces information as Specification.

Separately from that, as other influences:• development impacts technology through engineering; • labor impacts technology through architecture.

The relationship of information and technology must be achieved through additional agents. One of those agents is Design; the other is Systems.

A simple outcome of those influences is our usual attention to information design, information systems, technology design and technology systems.

At the view already shows, those combinations generate the models, platforms, automation and functions that together define current processing or potential future processing.

Today it is increasingly common that these clearly interrelated things become easily uncoordinated, with any one of them going through a substantive modification that has an undetermined or unresolved compatibility with the others.

When items in one area have missing or unknown interactions with items in contiguous areas, the lack of connection predisposes the limits of the overall processing’s supportability and integrity.

Implementing a process effectively means deciding what state each factor in the big picture should have concurrently with the others, and bringing the factors into those intended states.

Considering the target states, sources of existing differences and sources of current or potential change are numerous.

They include innovations, adoption of standards, capability maturation, investments, strategy, and learning.

Without predicting what changes willcome next, the overall view showshow currently observable influencesneed to fit together as contributors to process evolution.

©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Researchwww.archestra.commryder@archestra.com