Avoiding Technology Ice Dunes
This may be a metaphor that doesn't mean a lot to you southern and California people, but Idealware's based in Portland, Maine, and up here we give a fair amount of thought to snow. I was shoveling out the driveway from our first big snow of the season (maybe 6") yesterday, and while I did it, I was giving a fair amount of thought between the overlap in shoveling and technology planning. Bear with me here.
While you're shoveling out your driveway, you plan how much room you'll leave for the cars. Maybe you're feeling lazy, and you shovel out a passageway with just an inch or two to spare. Or maybe it's an easy shoveling job, and you shovel out generous room to turn in from both sides of the street.
It doesn't feel like a decision of much importance, until you've lived somewhere where it's below freezing most of the winter. Here, you build some serious snow dunes with what you've removed from the driveway. And soon those dunes thaw a little, freeze a little, and there's a little rain, and a little more snow on top of them... and within a few days your casually shoveled banks of snow become impenetrable blocks of ice. Which may well be with you until spring, unless you have an unseasonable thaw or invest a lot of backbreaking labor.
Okay, so here's where the metaphor comes in. There's a lot of technology decisions that we as nonprofits approach just as casually. But just as often, our decisions can be with us for much longer than we thought they would. You decide to just throw up a temporary website without a lot of thought to the structure... but then between one thing and another, you're still using it two years later. You decide to use a particular piece of software mostly because you need something in a hurry, but then your staff is used to it, knows how to use it, and doesn't want to change.
Change is hard, whether it's chipping through the ice to widen your driveway, or trying to move off something you've been using for a while. It's worth giving a little extra thought when you're making those "temporary" decisions, to consider whether they're likely to make your life a misery if you need to try to maneuver though between the barricades they've imposed for much longer than you planned.
While you're shoveling out your driveway, you plan how much room you'll leave for the cars. Maybe you're feeling lazy, and you shovel out a passageway with just an inch or two to spare. Or maybe it's an easy shoveling job, and you shovel out generous room to turn in from both sides of the street.
It doesn't feel like a decision of much importance, until you've lived somewhere where it's below freezing most of the winter. Here, you build some serious snow dunes with what you've removed from the driveway. And soon those dunes thaw a little, freeze a little, and there's a little rain, and a little more snow on top of them... and within a few days your casually shoveled banks of snow become impenetrable blocks of ice. Which may well be with you until spring, unless you have an unseasonable thaw or invest a lot of backbreaking labor.
Okay, so here's where the metaphor comes in. There's a lot of technology decisions that we as nonprofits approach just as casually. But just as often, our decisions can be with us for much longer than we thought they would. You decide to just throw up a temporary website without a lot of thought to the structure... but then between one thing and another, you're still using it two years later. You decide to use a particular piece of software mostly because you need something in a hurry, but then your staff is used to it, knows how to use it, and doesn't want to change.
Change is hard, whether it's chipping through the ice to widen your driveway, or trying to move off something you've been using for a while. It's worth giving a little extra thought when you're making those "temporary" decisions, to consider whether they're likely to make your life a misery if you need to try to maneuver though between the barricades they've imposed for much longer than you planned.
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4 Comments:
Great point- the real answer here is have the foresight to spend a little extra money to rent a snow blower for the really big snows. It's worth the longterm hassle.
Absolutely. I've got a tiny driveway, so a snow blower never quite seems justified, but I covet my neighbors.
It's hurting my brain a little to try to think of the nonprofit technology analog of renting a snow blower :>) Maybe it's having a plan or structure for what you're going to do when you need to make a technology decision, to keep yourself from making bad decisions because you make them too quickly or casually.
I think the analogy of renting a snow blower would be getting a grant to execute some technology service. When you rent something they expect you to take care of and use it for its intended purpose. That's how grantmakers are. What have you done with it? They want to know if have been good stewards of the technology and might give again if you've done well.
Great analogy (and engaging writing). I'm currently trying to convince my nonprofit to update their website--a serious ice dune. I haven't quite been able to communicate why this is important, though I'm going to toss this metaphor their way during the next meeting ;)
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