In these times of change, IT organizations are often tossed about like ships on the sea. They must navigate cyber storms, battle regulatory waves, and struggle against operational currents with discipline and precision.
Some survive, others … don’t.
An IT organization that runs a tight ship is the metaphorical kin to the elite: disciplined vessels for which every plank on the deck is polished, rigging taut – all made possible only by a disciplined and experienced crew. These IT crews conform meticulously to industry best practices and policies that dictate security protocols and data handling; as well as to standards that ensure consistent architectures and procedures covering everything from incident response to backups, rigorous change control practices, peer reviews, impact assessments and impeccable documentation. For such organizations involved in software development, commits are meaningful, branches are strategic, and every pull request is backed by a change control ticket, thus fostering traceability and accountability. Tight ships slice through the most turbulent seas with precision, with their cargo and records as detailed and protected as those of any sailing vessel.
By stark contrast, garbage scows are the derelict hulking masses clogging IT harbors. They are filled with digital refuse, are patched haphazardly, and crewed by exhausted, poorly-directed roustabouts. On garbage scows policies exist on paper but are not regularly updated, standards devolve into “whatever works” and procedures are folklore passed by word-of-mouth. Change control? – a myth, supplanted by cowboy coding and direct-to-production deploys that invite chaos. Software repositories mirror the scow’s filth with unversioned binaries, abandoned branches, commits reading “urgent fix” with zero supporting context, and with no linkage to business needs or audits. These near derelict IT vessels wallow in technical debt and regularly crash against the rocks of avoidable vulnerabilities. Their captains shout unheard orders into the wind while the anchors of legacy systems slowly drag everyone down to Davy Jones’ locker.
The operational chasm is glaring. Tight IT ships deploy with confidence via CI/CD pipelines, rolling back flaws in minutes thanks to pristine records and ever-present rollback plans, while their teams innovate atop a solid deck. Garbage scows flail during crises, with turbulent days and nights spent adrift, attempting to decipher spaghetti and undocumented legacy code, and enduring outages arising from the depths like some dread, deep-sea leviathan – entangling all in tentacles of untracked changes, constant finger-pointing, lost opportunity and boundless chaos.
In the end, helming a tight ship is non-negotiable for any organization intent on navigating towards growth and success. Adhering to IT best practices delivers positive security and privacy audit reports that please the stakeholders and avert disaster. Poor audits sink IT garbage scows, plunging their sad, misbegotten crews into the dark, briny depths.
Which are you? (Ask around)
