To Manchester for the second of two Tech Monitor roundtable discussions designed to explore today’s IT departments from the inside. Organised in association with AMD, ‘From operations to innovation: exploring the evolution of IT’ covered topics including leadership practice (good and bad), the impact of AI projects, the future of cloud computing, and overcoming talent shortages.
As with the London event, the evening began with attendees – IT professionals drawn from a range of industries, public and private – identifying barriers to delivery. The evening’s list of frustrations featured poor communication, restrictive release pipelines that lead to inevitable bottlenecks, a low appetite for risk among corporate strategists that restricts innovation, the impact of growth on organisational processes, talent management at a time of evolving roles, and a lack of clarity from top leadership.
Good leadership. Not necessarily agile
The last of those barriers became the first topic discussed in detail. Asked to expand on the accusation of poor leadership, one attendee offered an example. He cited the introduction of Agile software development principles as a universal approach to project management in his organisation. While noting that there is nothing wrong with the methodology, he argued that it is not suitable in every instance and that his company failed to recognise differing needs for different projects.
Why, then, had the principles been introduced? The conclusion was that they were likely seen as “cool” and because “Agile” is, for all intents and purposes, a useful PR buzzword. “Did anyone from leadership actually read the Agile Manifesto?” asked another attendee, nodding to the document that outlines the values and principles of this form of software development. The inference: not enough thought had been put into a decision that made little sense on a team-by-team basisand failed to reflect any wider organisational mission or vision.
If the unthinking implementation of Agile is illustrative of poor management decision-making, what, then, does good leadership look like? A key facet is effective communication, said more than one attendee. That doesn’t just mean sharing the “direction of travel” once, it means continuous communication – a necessity in office-based teams, and absolutely essential for teams separated by time zones or by hybrid working patterns in a post-Covid world.
An example of good communication, said one attendee, is effective onboarding. He pointed to his experience of starting a new role at an incubator at his current employer. The purpose and objectives of the project he was to work on were clearly set out and, at the same time, he was given autonomy to develop his own roadmap. The contrast with previous experiences of starting new projects, he said, was stark.
Another attendee, drawing from her time as captain of her rugby team, said sport teaches you about responding to failure, trusting your teammates, and empowering those around you – all vital leadership skills in the commercial world.
AI “lighthouses everywhere”
The conversation then turned to artificial intelligence and its uses. One attendee from the healthcare sector pointed to the recent adoption of machine learning to assess scans in his radiology department. By applying AI to act as a first pair of eyes, they said, not only is it speeding up the detection process, but it also means just one specialist consultant needs to provide secondary approval, not two. Asked if he was concerned about the prevalence of false positives – which can inadvertently add to the workload, undermining efficiency gains – the attendee said this wasn’t proving an issue and, in any case, it is better to have more false positives than false negatives in a health scenario.
Others are deploying generative AI (GenAI) to refine software code, improving its quality and ensuring it integrates effectively with existing applications. In the words of one attendee, GenAI may not be providing a single, monolithic solution, but it is producing a series of “lighthouses everywhere”. The innovation is evident.
A sceptical voice argued that GenAI-based assistants often fail to deliver the necessary user experience. She pointed out that the public sector, for example, invests “big” on UX expertise to fine-tune user journeys. With AI, though, “that’s not there.”
Cloud: public, private or hybrid?
The conversation swiftly moved from AI to the merits and demerits of cloud computing. One attendee works for a large legal firm that’s in the process of moving its entire operation from a data centre environment to the cloud. The promise of greater flexibility and the opportunity to replace “monolithic architecture” with modern microservices were the main motivations for the move. “If you just lift and shift [existing applications],” he said, “you won’t get the benefits.”
For others, a hybrid approach – mixing public and private environments – is proving attractive. One organisation represented is taking hybrid to the extreme, supporting a public cloud front-end, Oracle middleware, and an on-premise mainframe at the back end.
Wanted: “peak” skills
Talk of mainframes led to the final topic of the evening – talent management and skills shortages. For the organisation in question, the mainframe skills it used to possess in-house have now moved to an outsourcing company. Reliance on a third party for such a crucial part of its infrastructure is a potential risk and illustrates a wider concern about talent. Data scientists and cyber security professionals, too, are proving highly sought after but short in number.
Even in today’s globalised IT recruitment market, it’s clear that some skills remain scarce. Bad news for employers but good news for those with “peak” expertise who can ask for “eye-watering salaries”.
‘From operations to innovation: exploring the evolution of IT’ – a Tech Monitor roundtable executive dinner in association with AMD – took place at the King Street Townhouse, Manchester on Thursday 13 March 2025.
