In early 2000, following IT’s unprecedentedly effective response to the Y2K situation, the world botched its after-action review. Consumed by the need to have someone to blame, influencers from around the world proclaimed it was a hoax perpetrated by IT to inflate technology budgets and its perceived importance.
Happy to have a scapegoat, the world ignorantly sneered and then moved on to the next pseudo-culprit.
So now we have .”) Then there’s this simple plausibility test: We’re talking about a network that has to support several tens of thousands of end-users. Which is the more likely cause of systems failure in a Windows 3.1-based network that has to scale this far — a bad CrowdStrike patch or Windows 3.1 itself? It would be a bit like Southwest basing its engine technology on duct tape and aluminum foil. Maybe you could do it, but it would be just as crash-prone.
Implausibility won’t, sadly, persuade business executives who suffer from a confirmation bias that says IT’s request for funding .
Instead, it’s best to heed what follows from the CrowdStrike mess.
Insight #1: The CrowdStrike outage was more than a technical defect
Yes, .
Nor did the EU regulators insist because they were fools. Their goal was ensuring fair competition in the European OS marketplace. It was a trade-off that didn’t pay off. But then, trade-offs don’t always pay off. That’s why they’re called “trade-offs” and not “un-mixed blessings.”
Insight #2: Want someone to blame? Blame the Red Queen
CrowdStrike is in the cybersecurity business. Many, and perhaps most cybersecurity providers recognize they’re trapped in a “Red Queen Strategy.” Like Alice’s Wonderland nemesis they have to run as fast as they can to stay in one place.
They are, that is, under unrelenting pressure to release newer and more sophisticated responses to newer and more sophisticated threats.
It’s another way this is a systemic problem. Cybersecurity vendors like CrowdStrike have to deploy patches and releases more quickly than prudence would otherwise dictate, with “more quickly” translating to “” for insights into this perspective.
Insight #6: Proselytizing the ELT on IT’s trade-offs will pay off
All of which gets us back to a challenge all CIOs must overcome if they’re going to retain even the slightest shred of sanity: Making sure the company’s executive leadership team embraces the trade-off-laden nature of the IT trade. The CrowdStrike debacle gives you a case study you can use to highlight key IT trade-offs. The Red Queen dilemma — the speed vs. risk choice described above — is a good place to launch the conversation.
Then you can enlist the ELT’s help in setting the right balance point for some key trade-offs your own IT organization has to contend with.
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