The Strategic Developer: a new role for Higher Education?
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Transcript of The Strategic Developer: a new role for Higher Education?
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Paul [email protected]
@paulwalkhttp://www.paulwalk.net
The Strategic Developer
A new role for Higher Education?
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I’ll be talking about:
1. How we (in HE & FE) view software-developers
2. Our growing appetite for outsourcing
3. Being in a position to really exploit SaaS
4. the value of the strategic developer
5. conclusion
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1. How we (in HE & FE) view software-developers
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"I have never yet come across an engineer who can turn his hands to business.”
Lord Sugar
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http://freetheanimal.com/2013/01/corralling-the-paleo-movement-is-like-herding-cats.html
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the role of ‘developer’ is not valued
• very few developers make it into senior management in higher education and research
• developers are not invited to contribute at a strategic level for fear of being seen to be ‘technology driven’
• developers come and go, often on very junior and short-term contracts - therefore not recognised and trusted
• we have a rich & continuous source of talent from our student cohorts
• this means that there is little investment in developers
• consequently, we don’t get the best value from our developers (through no fault of their own!)
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which leads us to:
2. Our growing appetite for outsourcing
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“We don’t do IT development - it’s not our business - I’d outsource my granny if I could....”
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This slide adapted from presentation by Paul Curran (http://www.slideshare.net/JISC/paul-curran)
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IT as commodity
• what is sacrificed to achieve the convenience of treating IT as a commodity?
• the capacity to offer differentiated services to your paying customers
• the capacity to integrate systems unless it’s worth the while of the remote provider
• remember, HE is a small market to some providers - they might not care all that much about solving your niche problems
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What effect does treating IT as commodity (or outsourcing your granny) have on your ability to deliver an excellent student experience?
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This slide adapted from presentation by Paul Curran (http://www.slideshare.net/JISC/paul-curran)
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3. Being in a position to really exploit SaaS
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the SaaS relationship
• Software as a Service - where the software is delivered to your users across the network - very often accessed through a Web-browser
• new features added by the vendor and rolled out to all customers
• considerable economies are made possible, but:
• local customisation opportunities are limited, and you are one of many customers (potentially many more than in a pre-SaaS world)
• to offer more local integration and customisation potential, vendors increasingly offer machine-readable Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• APIs change the picture....
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APIs are interfaces for developers
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the value of the local developer
• should understand local conditions better than an external supplier
• is more accessible - very important when adopting agile development
• through (web) APIs, can tailor remote services to idiosyncratic local needs
• can engage the technical people in an external supplier - not just the pre-sales people!
• can engage with and exploit available open source developments
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Procurement
• procurement of any given SaaS needs to take into account the APIs offered by that SaaS service.
• this needs to be considered in the context of technical understanding of the integration possibilities with other local or SaaS systems with which you have a business relationship
• how do we engage in dialogue with vendors?
• what capacity do we need internally to deal with this?
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"Do we have the capabilities required to deliver value from IT?”
Diana Oblinger
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4. the value of the strategic developer
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simple SaaS relationship
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it’s usually more complicated....
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SaaS providers prefer this arrangement
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closing the gap between understanding & capacity
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the strategic developer
• is experienced, both technically and in the ‘business’ of Higher Education
• has good local (sometimes tacit) knowledge - such as the real business processes of the institution
• has moved beyond ‘problem solving’ as the extent of their perspective
• can align technical planning and interventions to strategic goals - has an institutional perspective
• gives a technical-development dimension to strategic planning
• offers leadership, beyond project-management and can identify new ICT-based opportunities to innovate and deliver a better student/staff experience
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the case of the missing career-path
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institutional memory and understanding
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business has addressed this problem by creating the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer)
what is the equivalent in our universities and colleges?
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5. conclusion
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"...to thrive in the digital future, you need people who understand all facets of it integrated from the very beginning. Take a lead from the Victorians and ignore Lord Sugar: bring engineers into your company at all levels, including the top.”
Eric Schmidt, CEO Google
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how many software developers does it take to change a lightbulb?
none.... that’s a hardware problem.