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Not another Internet Sand Trap?
By
Zachary Alexander
The IT Investment Architect®
An
endless number of new technology proposals are being written to build semantic
web “sandboxes.” The reason is because the semantic web is widely
seen as the next stage of the Internet revolution and a sandbox is a euphemism
for an experimental lab. Organizations are being told by their technical staffs
that they had better ante up or get out of the game.
Industry executives are asking how they can ensure that the company’s resources won’t be used to build another high-tech sand trap. In the game of golf, a sand trap is a pit that a golf ball can fall into and that a golfer can spend considerable resources getting out. A technology initiative can be called a sand trap when it becomes a money-pit that consumes all available resources only to deliver generic solutions. Here are three suggestions for navigating the current business environment and avoiding new technology development obstacles:
Don’t use the government model. In the government model for building a semantic web sandbox, the semantic web is a simple scaled down search engine. The search engine metaphor works for the government because the government collects and stores vast amounts of data, which is currently difficult to access. Anything that will add value to even a small subset of the data is a big win for the government.
However, for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations have different needs than the government. Non-governmental entities need to have actionable data that can be used to drive processes and trigger responses. Actionable data should be built using common sense concepts that are consistent with the user’s wants and needs.
Don’t let quick-wins and low-hanging fruit derail the project. The proposals for new technology projects like semantic web sandboxes tend to state that the project will deliver enterprise level benefits and economies of scale. Once the technology initiatives are underway, the primary goal changes to quick-wins and low-hanging fruit, which are short-term goals that solve tactical problems. These initiatives often fail because they do not take into account the multiple constituents that must use the system or receive products from the system.
Technology leaders should develop internal marketing plans that outline the benefits of the technology initiative and address any perceived problems. The rush to create a semantic web sandbox can become a single department’s high-tech toy box. If this happens then the needs of the entire organization will not be met and the effort may actually destroy value.
Don’t play the “features game.” The features game is the practice of adding features to current products in order to extend the product’s lifetime. This game is often practiced by large software vendors and comes with inflated cost structures. The higher cost structure is completely at odds with the risk profiles of new technology initiatives. New technology initiatives tend to be more risky because of the lack of trustworthy market research. Without market research and a definitive set of product features technology sandboxes should be developed in a bare-bones fashion without bells and whistles. There is no guarantee that the initially proposed benefits will in fact be the most important benefits. But history has shown that few industry-changing technologies emerge fully mature.
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