Siolon

The Lie of Technology Agnosticism

I’ve noticed an alarm­ing trend amongst IT con­sult­ing com­pa­nies as of late (although it might have been around for a while it’s new to me). These con­sult­ing com­pa­nies are claim­ing that they are “tech­nol­ogy agnos­tic” in how they craft solu­tions. By this they could mean one or both of these things, and I will address why each is not a rea­son to use that title.

They approach IT solu­tions with­out a pref­er­ence towards one tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion or another, or become that way when cor­nered. Often this type of “agnos­tic solu­tion” ref­er­ences to dis­ci­plines such as tax­on­omy devel­op­ment, gov­er­nance, etc.

“Agnos­tic” Tech­no­log­i­cal Solutions

Some com­pa­nies attempt to say they can do any kind of tech­no­log­i­cal imple­men­ta­tion that the client desires. This is a more dan­ger­ous than say­ing they are com­pletely bound by a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion (i.e. I can only use tech­nol­ogy x). It is very mis­lead­ing to make a client think that they have a method­ol­ogy that is supra-technological solution.

While it’s true that enter­prise infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture is a dis­ci­pline that can be applied to dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies it does take on a very dif­fer­ent form based on the solu­tion the client needs. For a con­sul­tant to go in for analy­sis push­ing one tech­nol­ogy and when the client desires another it’s irre­spon­si­ble and mis­lead­ing to inform them that they can go for­ward with the imple­men­ta­tion. A failed project is only down the road. The par­a­digms of appli­ca­tion with a field such as EIA varies much on the tech­nol­ogy. How one does tax­on­omy design and imple­men­ta­tion and Share­Point another prod­uct is very dif­fer­ent and should not be taken lightly.

While this is a rant of mine it is some­thing I feel a client should be made aware of a con­sul­tant that goes down such a dan­ger­ous road.