February 8, 2019
The 7 Signs of Bad IT Architecture
The seven warning signs of bad IT architecture. We live in an increasingly digital world, which makes the role of the chief information officer (CIO) even more important, no matter your industry or the size of your company. CIOs play a key role in defining and driving an IT strategy aligned with broader business goals. They help ensure the company is prepared for ever-evolving technologies.
**The seven warning signs of bad IT architecture.
We live in an increasingly digital world, which makes the role of the chief information officer (CIO) even more important, no matter your industry or the size of your company. CIOs play a key role in defining and driving an IT strategy aligned with broader business goals. They help ensure the company is prepared for ever-evolving technologies.
At the heart of everything CIOs do, you need solid IT architecture. This can be hard to achieve, especially when it comes to small and mid-sized businesses with limited resources. If your company shows one of the warning signs of bad IT architecture, it's time to act.**
Manual entry
One of the main benefits of technology is its ability to automate and reduce the need for manual data entry. If, on the contrary, you or your team spend time manually re-entering data, that's an immediate and obvious warning that something is wrong with your IT architecture.
Entry can lead to errors and diverts talent from more productive work.
Old and unsupported technology
This is another obvious sign of bad architecture. If you're using an old version of a programming language or software that is no longer supported, you need to change it. Older versions are expensive to maintain and can be almost impossible to integrate with modern, more efficient interfaces. They can also keep you from adapting to better solutions.
Tinkering
Hacks (kludges, or workarounds) are tempting. Faced with a problem, a deadline, a lack of resources, why not just put in a quick fix and hope no one notices? These quick "band-aid" solutions may seem to solve a problem, but they actually create weaknesses in the system and make future projects harder. You'll likely end up paying more to maintain these systems. You may end up with more staff downtime and higher training costs.
Redundancies
In business, one of the easiest ways to save money, resources, and time is to eliminate redundancies. That doesn't always mean laying people off; you can start by identifying redundancies in data or applications.
It seems obvious: if there are several applications capable of doing the same thing, the duplicates should go. In reality, making these changes can be difficult, whether due to political issues or legacy problems. However, these duplicates waste money and create confusion. They should therefore be consolidated into a single application.
Likewise, there should be only one source for each piece of data. Redundancies in data sources create errors, confusion, frustration, and wasted time and money.
One-off solutions
As with redundancies, having too many collections of one-off, special-purpose solutions creates confusion, wastes effort, and slows down the workday. Employees will often have to do manual re-entry again (see above for the potential for error). The proliferation of one-off solutions also increases the need for training.
Interface problems
A workaround often used with redundant data is to create more interfaces. Building more than one similar thing should never be the solution. More interfaces simply means more instability in the system and a waste of time that should be devoted to more productive activities.
Another solution is to use flashy integrations. In theory, these integrations could consolidate data sources and interfaces, but they often fall short.
Non-technical results
If you have or hire a team of architects specifically tasked with solving these problems or building your architecture from the ground up, and they provide you with a lot of paperwork, you may want to reassess. White papers are great for self-directed learning, but they won't really help you get the architecture you need.
Such groups are a waste of resources and risk being ignored, because the real work of building functional, robust IT systems and processes continues without them.
Next steps
If your company shows one or more of these warning signs, it's not too late to fix the problem. If you're a small or mid-sized business with limited resources, consider using a * CIO as a Service * platform that can help you meet your IT architecture needs.
Sources:
Forbes ,
CIO ,