ICT Therapy !?

Today I would like to take a closer look to an interesting column written two weeks ago by Peter Hinssen in the magazine Smart Business Strategies. In this article, entitled "The IT organism", Hinssen is suggesting a new approach to ICT management starting from the assessment that a big part of the actual frustrations are raising from the combination of two principles, both intrinsic to ICT: 1. the obsession with control; 2. the increasing complexity.

As a senior IT consultant himself, Peter Hinssen testifies how an increasing anxiety today is invading the moods of so many IT managers. On one hand they're driven by the strong will of controlling reality by structuring the data and processes of the company they work for, on the other hand they are confronted to the chaos produced by an infinite amount of new applications and devices, in extremely decentralised environments, and in permanent interaction with the uncontrollable Web!

In order to overcome this tension Hinssen comes up with two interesting parallelisms : the first between ICT and Quantum Physics (a), the second between ICT and Holistic Medicine (b).
(a) Just like Quantum Physics revolutionized Cartesian thinking by introducing an "Uncertainty Principle" ICT managers should evolve towards a methodology based on statistical probability, instead of keeping pretending they control all the bits and bytes. (b) Just like Western medicine, inspired by Asian philosophy, has shifted towards a holistic approach of the human body, ICT professionals should start interpreting an ICT system as a whole, as an organism, with a life of its own.

Although I really like the metaphors used by Hinssen, I'm not convinced the underlying methodological advises are revolutionary. As a an IT layman, I know that even if I'm updating my anti-virus and firewall as often as possible, there's still a probability for a virus to infect my PC; I'm taking in account this uncertainty. When I'm watching a movie in my Quick Time Player and I'm experiencing a slowdown in the image, I'm considering immediately this might be caused by Photoshop that's still active and absorbing too much CPU power. It's like the holistic diagnostic stating that a chronic headache is caused by hyperventilation. Many ICT professionals undoubtedly will be able to come up with much more complex examples of how they apply as well the uncertainty principle as the holistic approach in their daily ICT Therapy.

David