Who doesn’t like a tortured metaphor?
Think about a garden. A smart grower doesn’t just toss a bunch of seeds in the ground, hope for some rain and see what sprouts. They think about what they need or want, consider multiple varieties of each crop just in case some fare better than others in the current climate, and plan and prepare their garden (maybe in many sections). They buy seeds, plant, fertilize, weed, cultivate, and grow their crops. When time comes, they harvest their produce and enjoy the fruits (or vegetables) of their labors. And when they need something different, they look back to what maybe didn’t grow before and see if they can do it differently this time for better results.
Maybe pursuing IT innovations is similar. We can extent that agricultural metaphor to reframe how we handle rapidly changing technologies and user needs.
Think of yourself as a gardener where you’re experimenting with new and different technologies/processes/concepts, learning about them while creating proofs of concept, weeding/documenting things that aren’t working out, and cultivating stronger ideas so they’re ready to be used. And when some new priority or challenge comes along, you can harvest some of your most hearty offerings and get a faster start at providing a higher-value, lower-risk solution by growing a prior Proof of Concept into a Proof of Value. You can also revisit earlier ideas that didn’t work out so well initially, and see whether conditions have changed and maybe there’s a new opportunity to try it again in a different way.
Now multiply that times a big community of like-minded technologists and you’ve got a powerful framework for controlled, directed experimentation – one that values innovation, agility, learning from failure, and creativity. And our gardeners include a broad range of people including infrastructure specialists, sys admins, security engineers, developers, support specialists, project managers, and more.