AR nr 5 dec 2025. 29 dec

Subject: Velocity: the key to realizing value with IT

Many companies struggle to realize the value that they think should be realized with their IT.

Especially when they have multiple related projects going on, and a substantial set of applications.

What is often missing is velocity. Velocity is not just speed, it is speed with a direction.

Velocity is important, because when IT features become available sooner, two things happen.

First, you can start realizing the value sooner, which could be a competitive advantage. The early bird gets the worm.

Second, you can iterate faster. IT developments are often experiments. Will this feature work for its audience? Will it realize the benefits we are expecting?

The quicker the experiment can be done, the more experiments can be done in a given time.

This steers developments into the right direction, and this will lead to better results.

Here are a couple of elements that help create velocity for an entire company.

They boil down to creating a digital infrastructure that helps accelerate developments.

Number one. Cloud computing.

One of the core elements of cloud computing is that it offers a shared pre-built infrastructure that can be used to quickly roll out applications.

Cloud computing is a way to organize service delivery. While it is often thought of to mean handing over your valuable business data to big tech, this is by no means the only way. You can get a lot of benefits by running e.g. Kubernetes locally, or working with local providers. But it is essential to understand a service mindset, instead of a tech stack mindset.

Number two. Continuous delivery.

Cloud computing has enabled software development to move away from ‘waterfall’ approaches to delivering small increments really fast. This ‘continuous delivery’ model can bring a feature idea to production in a few days or weeks. But in order to contain the risks associated with that, it is important to have a pipeline, a flow, that automatically handles testing and building so that feedback can come fast.

That is velocity.

I have collected the best parts of my years of consulting experience on real projects into my book Digital Power: How Digital Infrastructures at Scale lead to Value, Power, and Risk.

Here are some relevant sections:

Services and Promise theory: https://digitalinfrastructures.nl/book/diginfra/promise-theory/

Deployment Diagrams https://digitalinfrastructures.nl/book/diginfra/deployment-diagrams/

Please reply with your thoughts and questions. I will answer to them.