IT Innovation is What Separates the Good from the Great

April 5, 2016

Innovation is What Separates the Good from the Great

By:Matt Angerer

It was the summer of 1998 in Harborcreek Pennsylvania – a small town in the northwest corner of the Quaker state, close to Lake Erie. We were the “Harborcreek Huskies” and had a reputation to uphold as a powerhouse football team in Pennsylvania. We prided ourselves on the notion of “Never be Satisfied” and your only as good as the last play – in other words, don’t rest on your laurels. I had the honor of leading my highschool football team that year as a co-captain and propelling our team to one of our best records in over a decade (6-3). That record might not sound impressive to everyone, but when your highschool is stuck in the middle of farming country where the boys you’re up against average 300lbs and the running backs can easily run a 4.5 40yd dash, it was pretty good – but not great.

“The extra step is what separates the good from the great.”

We had a saying on the football team, “The extra step is what separates the good from the great.” If you think about it in the context of football and sport, you can imagine how taking one or two extra steps could mean the difference between a fumble recovery for your team or a touchdown for the opposing team. It could also mean the difference between a tackle for a loss, or a first down. You see, we recognized that sometimes it’s just a matter of a few extra steps that makes all the difference for the team at large. The key, however, is ensuring that everyone on your team understands this concept at a cellular level and embraces it daily. They must embrace it during practice and they must embrace it even more on Friday night under the lights while the fans are screaming.

At ResultsPositive, we have a saying too, “Make a Difference.” It’s not just a saying; it’s ingrained in our culture and mindset with every client we serve. Just like my high school football motto of “Never be satisfied,” our mindset of “Make a Difference” is what we try to evoke in our projects that ultimately leads to innovation and positive outcomes. We even offer on-site interactive executive briefings that are designed to propel your team to the next level of ingenuity. To get from good to great, it starts with innovation – defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices, or methods.”

Similarly, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. If you recall, I mentioned that our football team had a “good year”, but not a “great year.” In retrospect, the reason for that was that our team mostly did the same thing over and over – while expecting a different outcome. We ran the ball over 90% of the time, while the state championship team understood the offence power of the “passing game.” We never embraced “new ideas, devices, or methods” and it ultimately cost us the County and State Championship that year.

For your organization, we encourage you to embrace the concept of IT innovation and invite you to participate in one of our Innovation Days, hosted by HPE Software and ResultsPositive.

We start by offering a menu of Innovation Day topics to your leadership team. We provide the industry expertise and thought leadership to help facilitate your organizational innovation. Topics include DevOps, Mobile Strategy, User Experience, and Project Management. The sessions are designed to help your team understand how new technologies in these areas are transforming the way software applications are being designed, developed, tested, and enhanced.

The purpose of these interactive sessions are to discuss and understand how you and your organization are embracing and solving today’s IT innovation challenges. Never heard of Predictive Analytics? Let us explain it to you and show how NextGen ALM by HPE is paving the way. We know that lines of business are demanding technology organizations to speed their time to value, provide amazing consumer and end-user experiences, and increase operational efficiency. It’s as daunting as it is exciting, full of opportunities to create positive outcomes. Let us help your organization Make a Difference through our IT Innovation Day sessions.

Here is an example agenda customizable to meet your personal and organizational goals and objectives:

Opening

Introductions
Customer – Review and discuss current goals and major Initiatives
IT Technology Innovation customer stories and examples

Agile Application Development & DevOps Myths and Trends

Continuous Delivery and Continuous Assessment
Agile and Scaled Agile Development practices
Predictive Development Analytics
Automated Dev/Test environment management

Mobile Development Technology Innovations & Trends

Manual, Exploratory, and Automated Functional Testing on Devices and Emulators
End to End Mobile Application testing from manual/exploratory to load, network performance and security testing
Mobile Application User Experience
Mobile Application Analytics

Ask about our catered IT Innovation Day demos and discussions to bring new ideas and processes into your company initiatives. Contact us today, or download the Innovation Day brochure to review this special opportunity with senior leadership within your organization.