At some point, the work changed. I wasn’t configuring systems anymore.

I was describing how they should exist. This came up during a large project — multiple locations, multiple companies, multiple teams all needing to work together. The task was to produce an IT Execution Plan. On paper, that sounds straightforward.

  • Define the systems.
  • Define the infrastructure.
  • Define how it all works.

In reality, it was something else. It wasn’t about individual systems. It was about consistency. People would be working across:

  • An office UK
  • An office Italy
  • International fabrication yards
  • A jobsite in Canada

The expectation was simple. It should feel like one environment From the plan:

“Interface presentation will be uniform across all locations…”

That meant:

  • same tools
  • same access
  • same behaviour

Regardless of where someone was sitting. Security followed the same pattern. Rather than trying to define every possible scenario, the model was:

“access… will be denied by default and enabled only with approval”

Start closed.

Open only what’s needed. Data was another challenge.

  • Multiple companies.
  • Multiple systems.
  • Different ways of working.

The goal was to reduce that complexity:

“single sources of information/data wherever possible”

Not always achievable. But always the direction. There were also boundaries to manage.

  • Corporate IT.
  • Project IT.
  • Joint venture partner systems.

Each with their own responsibilities. Each with their own constraints. The job wasn’t to replace those systems. It was to make them work together. Looking back, this was different from the work I’d done before. Earlier roles were about:

  • building systems
  • fixing problems
  • making things work

This was about:

  • defining models
  • aligning teams
  • describing how things should work before they existed

Not everything in that plan would have survived contact with reality.

  • Projects evolve.
  • Constraints appear.
  • Decisions change.

But the exercise itself was valuable. It forced a shift in thinking. From:

“how do I configure this?”

To:

“what should this look like at scale?”

And that’s a different kind of problem entirely.

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