IT run or pass – What’s your football persona?

by. David Jones

Having recently attended the 49ers demolition of the Jaguars at Wembley Stadium, and with the news that my beloved Cowboys are paying me a visit for the NFL International Series in 2014, I got to thinking about how a football team relates to IT projects.

Make a well-planned call

For me, the way an IT solution is deployed in today’s environment can be thought of in a similar way to an offensive coach’s play calling strategy – namely, run versus pass.

Most offenses will start by heading to the run game. This is the tried and tested route – it probably won’t get you big yardage, but it will get the ball moving forward. It’s the equivalent of existing IT systems or an on-premises deployment of a new system. The organization can remove as many unknown elements from the equation as possible and move forward at a manageable pace.

Manage the risks

However, there are costs. From an IT perspective, servers, networks and the associated staff are not cheap – the football equivalent of the amount of time it takes for a run play to make 10 yards. Oh, and did I mention that sometimes the running game does not make the progress required to get to the next stage? Reliable and solid, but largely unspectacular – unless you happen to have the IT team equivalent of Adrian Peterson on your roster. But looking at the stats, the run game has been in decline since the early 80s.

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