January 27, 1997
Setting Your Watch to Web Time
By Bob O'Donnell
It's very fashionable these days to describe time in terms of "Web time."
I've even heard of polls trying to determine how long in real time a Web year is supposed
to be.
The idea's basis, of course, is that things happen so quickly on the Web that life
in/on the Web somehow transcends the traditional notions of time; six months on the Web is
a virtual eternity. Personally, I think this is a case of the digerati getting a little
too caught up in their own world. Still, there's no denying that developments related to
Internet and intranet technologies are moving at a remarkably fast pace, even compared to
the rapidly changing computer industry.
Now contrast this notion of Web time with the project time frames that most IS managers
deal with. For a number of very legitimate reasons, IS departments generally move very
slowly and cautiously. Almost all major companies have information systems at the very
core of their business. The dependence placed on these systems makes it incumbent upon IS
to take a conservative approach that guarantees these systems' continued operation.
Consequently, it's not unusual for an organization to plan to take 18 months or longer
to roll out significant changes across the enterprise. The reasoning behind these
calendars is usually sound; IS needs to ensure that individuals can continue to work
productively and that the company's information systems remain stable.
As companies start to embrace (or at least begin flirting with) the Internet and
intranet technologies, however, there's an obvious problem. Web time and IS time are at
opposite ends of the spectrum, and companies are going to find it difficult to develop and
implement Internet/intranet strategies because of the differences between them. For
example, what should a company do if the browser that it has selected as part of its
standard software suite is revved two or three times a year? The IS department could
select a particular version and try to standardize the company on that. But if content,
developed by another department, for the company's intranet starts to include
technological enhancements, such as new HTML tags, that the standard browser doesn't
support, the IS shop will have big trouble.
These general principles can be applied to numerous other Internet/intranet
applications. There seems to be a fundamental difference in mindset between vendors
developing Internet-related technologies and IS departments that need to deploy them.
This issue was brought home for me at the Internet Commerce Expo trade show last fall
where I moderated a panel discussion on the pace of browser development. After a Netscape
representative discussed the next version of Navigator (barely a week after the previous
version had actually shipped), I asked the audience of IS professionals how they would
cope with this rate of change.
"It's change or die," one woman replied. "We used to move at a much
slower pace, but our top executives believe we need to stay on top of these new
technologies to keep our company competitive, so we've had to adapt."
With the notion of constant change becoming the business mantra for the late 1990s,
this seems like the approach many IS departments may be forced to take. Of course, it
doesn't answer the difficult question of how you increase your rate of change while still
ensuring your systems' reliability. New tools, such as software distribution solutions,
more secure firewalls, and other technology enhancements, should help you tackle new
business initiatives. But people issues surrounding rapid technological changes, such as
training concerns, are still as difficult as ever.
In the end, the challenge will be to find the proper balance between the need for
change and the need for stability. I certainly don't believe IS managers need to set their
clocks to Web time, but as companies move to embrace Internet/intranet technologies they
will need to adapt to the time change.
©
Copyright 1997, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
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