How can companies best cope with accelerated growth in terms of IT operations?

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My company’s experiencing accelerated growth for sure and that creates all kinds of broken glass. My hypothesis was that any amount of velocity creates broken glass and at this rate, it must be really tremendous. And it's true, there's a lot of broken glass. The problem that we're solving is one that every company has, which is trying to stitch a lot of different technologies together. We're providing all the stitching operations for our customers, but I think this space is still maturing, in general. To me, it's a bit of a science project even now.

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You have to turn that growth into an asset or a strategy, which is what we did at Facebook. That’s one of the keys to survival. If you know anything about the SR71 Blackbird, it's a spy plane that was built in the ‘60s. It surfs on the shockwave of the sound barrier which is how it's able to sustain Mach 3 performance for thousands and thousands of miles when no other aircraft could do the same for even 15 seconds. The speed was necessary for the fuselage, which would fall apart and leak if it was sitting on the ground. It's kind of the same thing with growth: figure out how to make it propel you forward so you don't get crushed by it. It's easier said than done, but Facebook's IT organization definitely would have leaked if there was no growth in 2010.

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Be close to what is happening across the organisation. If you can better understand the demand which will be placed on IT you can be better prepared. Living in Hypergrowth, if that is the strategy for the org, is something that needs to become the norm.

It is exciting but draining, IT needs to be comfortable with changing priorities and understanding this will happen. Leadership both of IT and the organisation also needs to be flexible when things are not 100 percent they way they should be.

Put as much flexibility in place as possible. Be prepared to work outside of the lines of your policies and processes to move forward, clean up when you get chance.

How can companies best cope with accelerated growth in terms of IT operations?

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