Thanks Obama! Technology Should Not Be An Afterthought

It is the era of the meme -- typically a frothy little sound byte, often embedded in an image, that's lacking in basis but has an abundance of snark. These memes are mimicked and shared across social media en masse. Currently the theme seems to be "Thanks, Obama" and blaming our president for all the ills that pain the nation and the world.

A LinkedIn post titled "CEO Lessons from Obamacare" caught my eye and provided great insight from someone in a top leadership position about the Affordable Care Act website debacle the world is watching. Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian writes:

Boom. Let's dissect this. This is a major advancement, a major project, a major initiative/game changer/improvement, that's reliant on technology, yet is it possible that technology was not brought in on the discussion when the initiative was but a mere twinkle in a random eye? Are citizens truly unaware that this is certainly not an uncommon occurrence in any industry?

I once worked for an institution where the leader tried to bully (for lack of a better term) the technology department into making a for-certain-bad strategic decision by dismissing our fervent concerns with a laughter-rich, incredulous "Come on. It's not like software development is rocket science."

No, in most cases, software development is not actual rocket science (except, of course, where the software is meant to power rockets). However, one could make the argument that software development is more complex than rocket science. Blogger Raghav K makes the case: "I think rocket science is easy when compared to the software development activity. Most of the time the parameters required to build a rocket remain constant."

I get it. And for the most part, I agree. The landscape of technology is consistently changing. Breach attempts continue to increase, and the challenges never level off when they don't even taper off. Technology improves efficiency, increases service, eliminates hours-of-operation barriers, and provides the ultimate convenience, but these features do not occur automagically. They require full knowledge of historical context of service, current process, and the desired outcome, as well as an abundance of time. You need time to vet with experts, peers, and even Dr. Google. You need time for methodology development, programming and system needs, budget, timelines, testing, training, testing, reconfiguration, testing, implementation, feedback, and did I mention testing?

So when I say, "Thanks, Obama," I actually mean -- well, a sincere thank you. Amid the stress of the ACA online rollout, I think the technology community has learned a deeper respect for some things.

Technology needs a seat at the table. It doesn't need to be fancy or to the immediate right of the CEO. It simply needs to have a place setting and maybe some bread for starters. If your technology leader needs to brush up on table manners or etiquette to integrate better, it's worth the investment to mold that leader into the active participant you need. A big-picture technology representative will not always tell you what you want to hear. We can't simply parrot our leader's words, but we will bring a realistic, doable path to a solution to the project every single time, and we will ensure a comparably seamless introduction to the user base, small to large.