{"id":259,"date":"2020-06-17T11:48:35","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T10:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/?p=259"},"modified":"2020-07-16T15:14:55","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T14:14:55","slug":"the-silver-lining-in-every-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/2020\/06\/the-silver-lining-in-every-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"The silver lining in every cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

by Gary Gerrard<\/strong>, communications and marketing manager <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October 2019 I took my first nervous steps into a new role as a communications consultant for i3Works, and began my first client-side placement for them, which was to support a project delivering the MODCloud hosting solution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As the saying\ngoes: \u201cyou\u2019re never too old to learn\u201d. So, as my seven-month stint comes to an\nend, I am now looking back at my time within MOD\u2019s Application Services and\nDevOps Team, or ASDT as it is best known, to see what lessons I can take from\nit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe the\nmost important lesson I\u2019ve learned is the benefit of bringing in consultants.\nYes, I know; I am one, so I would say that, wouldn\u2019t I? But hear me out. After\nspending years in local government communications, one of the sticks we would\noften be beaten with by the local press was the amount of money spent on\nconsultants and how it could have been spent on X binmen or Y social workers.\nIn retrospect, I don\u2019t think we challenged these arguments well at the time. We\ncould have put forward a good counter about the need for subject matter\nexpertise, ensuring effective knowledge transfer and upskilling, the finite\nduration of the contract, and much more. I don\u2019t think we ever did. Indeed, on\noccasions where the consultancy was a result of bad succession planning, we even\nfelt that the media had a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identifying the\nrisks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, working within ASDT I have seen first-hand all the positives consultants can bring to a project. In the defence sector, MODCloud was an unknown entity: a centralised application hosting service bringing the best of industry hosting platforms into one place for defence customers to consume on a pay-as-you-go basis. Clearly, this is a hugely ambitious and challenging project, and the need for additional support to get it up and running was identified as part of the initiation process. Skills and enthusiasm are great, and the team within ASDT has those in abundance, but if you\u2019re unfamiliar with the territory, it\u2019s better to have someone with the necessary experience to guide you through it if you\u2019re to navigate it successfully. This is one of the main reasons why the project specifically called for a delivery partner to support the MoD with its development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge and skill\nsupport<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apologies for the\nfootball metaphor, but you can have all the Messis and\nRonaldos of the world in your team, and when they click, the results will be\nbrilliant. However, sometimes you have to go beyond admiring the talent and\nlook to plug the gaps in even the most eye-catching line-ups. Looking great\ngoing forward and scoring spectacular goals is no good if you can’t defend,\nhave no goalkeeper, and everyone wants to play the same position. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, after\nassessing the strengths of their team and identifying where the gaps were, ASDT\u2019s\nleadership called on consultants for support. Where ASDT felt that their ITIL\/waterfall-based\nproject management didn\u2019t suit requirements \u2013 for instance in DevOps, where the\n\u2018fail fast\u2019 mantra applies \u2013 experts in Agile P3M practices were brought in to\nalign two methodologies into a coherent, workable format. Where additional customer\nand stakeholder engagement expertise was needed, people were called upon who\nhave done this kind of thing previously. And key to all this; the necessary\ncloud hosting infrastructure experience resulted in solution architects with a\nbackground in standing up similar projects being brought on board. It all makes\nsense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only did this\nallow the project to get started, but it also gave internal staff the chance to\nlearn from people who\u2019ve been there, seen it and done it, while allowing the\nservice itself more time to evolve its processes and source and\/or train the people\nwho will take the finished product forward once the project is complete. The front-loaded\noutlay on experience, expertise and specialist skills is worth it in the long\nterm to achieve sustainable success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A colony of\nconsultants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why,\namong the MOD employees within ASDT, I found myself working alongside other\ni3Works consultants in service management, as scrum masters, in customer\nengagement and more, as well as technical experts from CACI and Netcompany. The\nteam was additionally boosted by people from cloud hosting platform providers\nsuch as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Prolinx. The whole system worked so\nsmoothly that, to an outsider, you\u2019d have struggled to spot the consultants,\nwhich is testimony to how well they embed into existing teams, how much they\nare relied upon, and how hard they work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The role of good\nmanagement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this is can\nbe attributed to the leadership within ASDT. I expected: military, ergo rigid\nhierarchy and regimented ways of doing things. I was wrong. The drive to\ndeliver never dissipates, but the freedom for people within ASDT to contribute,\nchallenge and collaborate is amazing. The work gets done, and it gets done with\na smile on people\u2019s faces. This is led from the top by Brigadier Sara Sharkey,\nthrough her senior leadership team and assistant heads, all the way across the\nservice. Nobody locks themselves away from the masses and every single person\nis approachable and accessible. The leadership provide direction, but they also\nprovide support and join in discussions, listen to ideas and feedback, and are\nnot shy about publicly crediting teams and individuals for their work. Even the\nmost forward-thinking private enterprises could learn about modern\npeople-management principles from this team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An ability to\nspot capability<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the final\nthing I learned is that there is little difference in skillsets and technical\nexpertise between the people within ASDT, and recognised brand leaders. My\nprogramming skills became obsolete after Basic, Pascal and Z80 Assembler were\nsuperseded, but I do retain some knowledge in that area. Even so, there are\nspecialist developers within the teams of whose skills I am in genuine awe,\nworking across the service, developing software and apps across several\nprojects. When that expertise is recognised by the likes of Microsoft, who\ninvited members of ASDT to present at one of their prestigious events, and by\nmultinational security experts Trend Micro for not only spotting an issue with\ntheir software, but helping rectify it, you realise that the private sector\ndoes not have a monopoly on exceptional talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what have I\nlearned? In essence, consultants are not only useful, but in certain\ncircumstances, essential; that the MoD has some exceptionally capable and\nflexible people who are being allowed to flourish; and that MoDCloud will be a\ngreat success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, it\u2019s\nbeen an enjoyable experience learning these lessons. Here\u2019s to many more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Gary Gerrard, communications and marketing manager In October 2019 I took my first nervous steps into a new role as a communications consultant for i3Works, and began my first client-side placement for them, which was to support a project delivering the MODCloud hosting solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}