Last Thursday I presented at the Wellington ITx Conference on the topic 'Moving From Legacy To The Future – Can You Get There From Here?'.

Shane Ross introduced Daniel Scott-Raynsford of IAG New Zealand at our client event a couple of weeks ago, and in the process he provided some context on why we approached IAG to speak. Many examples of successful DevOps, Agile and Cloud adoption focus on start-up and high-growth companies who are able to bake in these approaches from the start, unencumbered by legacy technology, strict regulatory controls and deep-rooted structures and ways of working.

IT and the CIO role is changing significantly. New technologies, different operating models and modern experiences and expectations are changing the landscape and the CIO role is constantly evolving to meet the new reality.

We have always taken the view at Equinox IT that there is no single right way and that as consultants we bring a toolkit and use the right tool for the job.

For a long time we have used the sense making Cynefin Framework developed by Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge and the Cynefin Centre to help understand how we and our clients best respond to business and IT problems that are obvious, complicated, complex or chaotic. A number of our consultants have attended Cynefin training with Dave Snowden.

Nearly every organisation is somewhere on their cloud journey - at Equinox IT we spend a lot of time helping organisations to decide how rapidly they can safely transition their systems. While there are technical constraints, mostly these are conversations about the risk appetite of the organisation, and what rate of change both users and IT staff are able to cope with. Many organisations associate their current technologies, structures and operating models with low-risk and perceive rapid change as increasing risk - when in reality not changing fast enough can put them at greater risk.