2020 was a challenging year for most. New terms like “Covid-19”, “social distancing,” “virtual happy hours,” and “wear a mask” all indicate the general chaos we have faced. There was a massive shift in our work lives, primarily working from home and Zoom or Teams video conferencing. All of this required a quick and substantial change in information technology. And yet, it worked as well or better than expected. So what did IT get right in 2020?
What did IT Get Right in 2020?
The first thing is the “quick” part. Everybody knew the urgency of the situation. People were scared to be in an office, in close quarters with others. We had to keep six feet apart, and terms like “essential workers” burst onto the scene. The pandemic necessitated a quick response from IT to switch users from local access to remote access. And to create Remote Desktop systems and purchase large quantities of laptops (which were difficult to find for a while). Webcams sold at a premium; at times, a $50 webcam was selling for $200 or more.
And despite this, IT was moving forward and making it happen for users. People were almost immediately able to work from home, safe in their home office/dining room/closet. I saw most organizations moved to 100% remote work (outside of roles that require hands-on tasks) in just a few weeks, in some cases less than a week.
The Massive Shift was Another Piece IT Got Right in 2020.
In addition to being quick, it was a massive shift. These two are generally not together when it comes to information technology. Many view IT as slow, controlling, or inattentive. But in 2020, they moved efficiently and effectively to support people’s safe work. We often view work as being done at a PC in our knowledge worker era, so this capability was critical to many:
- The employee’s safety.
- The ability of the organization’s to continue working and generating revenue and profits for long term security. Reviewing the stock markets and other indicators, after a significant initial drop, things came back strong, an indicator of confidence and strength.
- The ability to have some normalcy of work and a feeling of productivity, which was essential.
What did IT Get Right in 2020? Information Security
The significant variable in all of the changes was information security. Anytime substantial changes are happening quickly, nefarious people want to profit. In real-world terms, if many houses are being built in an area, people may steal materials from job sites. During 2020, new threats popped up intended to exploit holes. The first hole I saw used was people, which is usually the case. As someone said once, the “best firewall is a human firewall.” In other words, people need to know what to click and what to avoid. Almost immediately, we saw emails with “IMPORTANT AND URGENT CORONAVIRUS INFORMATION,” and scared users clicked, thinking the information was vital for them and their families. But in the email were malicious payloads that could infect a system.
But I never saw a sizeable loss as a result of this—Bravo to the users who showed restraint.
That is not to say there were no breaches – there were plenty like there always are, but most could not be attributed to the changes IT made, even though the possibility of hacking was, and still is, present.
The second piece of the security risk was the new connections. Suddenly, employees accessed corporate assets from non-corporate locations. IT installs rules on corporate network devices like firewalls to make use safer. When users started working from home, IT lost the ability to control the firewall where users were sitting. And in some cases, people were using a home PC to access the systems – so even tools like anti-virus may not have been present.
Users were happy
Perhaps we all had a moment of understanding and realigned sense of what was important. But I saw an uptick in user satisfaction on post-ticket surveys. Service industries are commonplace of complaints by default, but in 2020, IT played the hero and without fuss.
How did IT do this?
It really comes down to two things which IT has been doing for a long time:
- Being Agile – IT has led in the adoption of agile methodology for project management for almost 20 years, but well beyond that is a general culture and value of agility. Agile can be many things, but for our purposes, it is the the ability to change and adjust to a new team organization, business process, technology, and market conditions (People + Process + Tools aligned to and leading the the market drives positive change) . Over the last several years, systems were moved to the cloud, both as private clouds like hosted company servers and public cloud options including Office 365, SalesForce.com, and others. From the user’s view, they were already “remote”; sitting in an office but accessing systems elsewhere. This approach, combined with improved residential broadband from cable or fiber providers, meant that most people have enough access from home to systems designed for remote access. They were able to perform as well or even better than they did from the office because IT built a set of people, process, and tools which were agile.
- The second is resilience – IT has long been a group that works long hours, late at night and on weekends to support the change in the business without disrupting the workflow. This is resilience – delivering on the vision and promise – no matter the challenges.
So, what did IT get right in 2020?
- Quick and responsive actions to a pandemic.
- A colossal shift, supported by a general trend over the years.
- Helping users navigate the changes.
- Kept organizations and people safe and happy.
And that is largely because they established an agile, resilient approach long before.
Well Done IT! Well done!