Corporate IT departments are changing how they handle in-house software development in a way that mirrors what's happening in the world of device software, according to a new article by three McKinsey & Co. consultants. Despite the rise of commercial software, many corporate IT departments spend well over half their applications budgets on custom software. To reduce this cost, and to speed development and customization time, these IT departments are taking some very DSO-like approaches.
Progressive IT departments are standardizing—mainly, on maintenance, support, and maintenance, the authors say. They're building apps from common, internally built "modules of functionality," essentially reusing code. They're standardizing app-dev processes across the enterprise. And they're creating standard application interfaces.
The leverage seems to come from taking work that was formerly done in development silos, and moving it to the enterprise, according to the McKinsey consultants. Vendor relations, for example, can be leveraged to obtain lower prices. Routine tasks can be coordinated, eliminating duplicative work. Product options can be defined by the CIO or other top IT execs to reduce the time spent designing the infrastructure for the most common applications.
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