2020 hindsight: a review of the year in IT

Well, that was 2020. IT’s year of adapt and survive… It went something like this:

January: Brexit finally becomes an actual thing. We all start planning for a year focused on international trade changes.

People are getting hot under the collar about IR35, which looks likely to change the face of IT contracting. Least it’s not snowing.

February: My friend gets a weird flu. Loses his sense of smell and has a cough that won’t go away. No idea what that was.

March: All hell breaks loose.  Politicians take to standing at lecterns and telling us to stay home. Schools shut, shops shut, flights stop. In a slightly-jolly Blitz spirit, IT people save the day by hunting through cupboards to find as many dusty old laptops as possible, handing them to people who are sent running from the building clutching a password for something called Zoom.

But it’s OK, because it’s only going to be a couple of weeks or so, and at least the IR35 changes have been postponed.

April. It’s sunny. The roads and skies are empty and pollution free. And thousands of people are dying.

Not-admitting-to-enjoying-the-heroics has evaporated.  The case for – and shortcomings of - national, equitable broadband is illustrated in real time. Disaster recovery has been tested to the max. Sourcing IT kit, fixing access and security problems and cobbling-together becomes part of the daily grind for IT.

May: We press on. In IT contracting, it becomes clear that clients are not starting planned programmes, as clearly it will be easier to do this when we can all get back to normal meetings and workplace conversations. Some Programmes are halted, as the more nervous clients start to be concerned about expenditure, now that the forecast “Sharp V” of recession is shaped more like a tick… IT interims look forward to a few weeks in the garden.

June: It looks like the worst is over. I post an article blithely telling the IT world it has 90 Days to lay claim to change leadership, before we all go back to business as usual. Yeah right, Mark, thanks for that…

July: We’re moving in the right direction. With our help, offices are made Covid-safe for the Big Return in September. IT contractors have beautifully weed-free gardens and that’s OK, because the recruiters believe it will all pick up again at the end of summer.

August: We eat out to help out – it’s the least we can do. Optimists who still have holidays booked find themselves charging back from Spain and France as “travel corridors” close off like something from another remake of The Poseidon Adventure.

September: Homeworking parents bedeck their houses with bunting as schools reopen. Everyone discovers their suits no longer fit as they head back into the office. Pret is saved.

It lasts about a fortnight...

October: There has been no Big Restart. Thousands of IT contractors are out of work. Very few new projects have started as expected in September. R&D is still on hold. Confident, complex and safe-as-houses industries and sectors like travel, commercial property, weddings, aircraft manufacture, brewing, conference services and training are collapsing. It's now not just a problem for contractors: IT employees face redundancy levels that have not been seen for a decade.

November:  See April: but with the added downside of Retail Armageddon.

But then…. Some wonderfully hardworking, inventive and nimble-thinking people create, evaluate and approve a Covid vaccine.

December: We are all entirely exhausted. But the difference now is that the end is in sight. Even Brexit and IR35 have reappeared and we are almost pleased to see them.

So what have we learned?

Demand for what we all do in IT has been be seismically disrupted in just nine months. Depending on the role you fulfil, you will have been asked to adapt, innovate, be creative, compromise, crisis manage, work at the kitchen table, persuade, persevere, be patient, or apply for a new job. And in many cases, all of the above.

I think the biggest deal is that we have changed. We have taken on the challenge, turned on sixpences and delivered as very best we could. We have proved IT contributes positively to business – if only by bringing in click and collect and card machines for tiny shops – and to business continuity. It turned out we could all be creative problem solvers and agile thinkers. Some of us could even teach compound fractions and now understand what the subjunctive is.

The real opportunity for IT will be to stay this nimble and open-minded in 2021. And all the rest of the decade after that.  

With thanks to everyone who read any of my ramblings this year: have a very happy Christmas and a much better 2021!

Mark Aikman is the author of Uncommon Sense: Alternative Thinking on Digital Transformation. Found at:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Uncommon-Sense-Alternative-Thinking-Transformation-ebook/dp/B08KSG513Q

 https://books.apple.com/gb/book/uncommon-sense/id1536877985