The IT Blog

Tag: IT

  • Should IT Departments Embrace being Hosting Providers?

    Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to people across a variety of companies, and one thing has become quite obvious: with today’s tooling, employees are eager and able(!) to build their own applications. Whether it’s a small script to automate a tedious task or a full-fledged web application to solve a very specific problem, they’re motivated to create solutions – both in their personal time (and often even on their own personal expense) and, increasingly, in a business context.

    But there’s also a pattern that I recognized: There usually is no process and environment where people can simply deploy their applications in a business context. Those applications are built with great enthusiasm – an enthusiasm that you wouldn’t even create with cool company events – only to hit a wall when it comes to deployment. Employees either lack the infrastructure to run their applications, face weeks of approvals, or hit unexpected cost barriers – all of which kill innovation and drive shadow IT. The result? Wasted potential, security risks, and frustrated teams that could be building solutions for your business.

    What if they also take the role of a hosting provider

    This got me thinking: What if IT departments expanded their role? Instead of acting purely as a service provider for infrastructure and/or implementation, what if they also take the role of a hosting provider? What if they channeled this energy and provided a platform where employees could safely deploy their applications, turning shadow IT into visible, manageable, and secure IT?

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  • “Ask for forgiveness, not permission” – The Real Cost of Moving Too Fast

    In Germany, there’s a saying: “Besser um Vergebung bitten als um Erlaubnis fragen” (“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission”) or “Gleich mal Fakten schaffen” (“Make decisions fast and set facts”). These phrases often glorify quick action, suggesting that speed leads to progress and success.

    Well, I can tell you right now — I really hate that mindset. It may look like a shortcut to success, but in reality, it often creates a mess that no one talks about. The consequences are rarely considered in the rush for fast decisions, and I’ve seen more harm than good come from it. What starts as quick success ends up piling up technical debt, inefficiencies, and unseen costs that will have to be dealt with – sooner or later. And like financial debt, technical debt piles up quietly, and the longer you delay paying it back, the more difficult it can get.

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  • 8 Years in my Current Company

    At the beginning of the month, a colleague reminded me that I had been with the company for 8 years now! A little anniversary! I reflected about the past years when at the same time a recruiter message reached me, what my motivation would be to “leave my comfort zone“.

    Before being here, I changed jobs about every 2 years. The team was always great – super lovely people that I still miss, but I felt like I couldn’t improve anymore, I felt stuck and I felt like I wasn’t adding value to the company any more – and I then did the necessary steps.

    It was the first time I joined a larger corporation. And obviously something was different here – otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed so long, right? So I started reflecting what I did all those years long. Was it worth staying? Am I, perhaps, settling into a comfort zone?

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  • Don’t Believe Everything …

    We’ve all been there: listening to a talk, podcast or reading about groundbreaking innovations, especially on LinkedIn. It all sounds fantastic, super new, cutting edge technology – almost too good to be true. And often … it is.

    Overselling seems to be more common lately – or maybe I’m just noticing it more? Especially with the AI “trend” lately, everyone is “AI first” and doing extremely successful programmes – it seems. But when you get to know someone in the tech field directly, it turns out that we’ve just seen a proof-of-concept project, a project that was stopped after a while for various reasons (didn’t bring the expected results, was over budget, or was never intended to go live at all), or that it is just WAY more complex than illustrated and only the very tiny cool part was told.

    It also seems like a pattern to me: The higher someone is in a company, the less reliable their statements are. C-level executives sell visions, middle management sell their successes / themselfes, while engineers are more likely to tell the real story (tech debt, failed experiments, complex architecture and hard compromises).

    I think I’ve developed a healthy(?) scepticism. The first questions I ask myself are Who is telling the story (position)? Why are they telling the story (promoting the technology, promoting themselves, promoting a solution)? What is not being said?

    The truth seems to be often in the gaps … unfortunately.

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