End of a technology life cycle.

IT systems change all the time. It's like upgrading an airplane engine in flight. Part of the fun, the challenge, the opportunity.

What does your IT department have? What gear, software, data? How do they fit together? When can we retire this old stuff? How will this system change affect the rest of the infrastructure?  

CIOs turn to their IT architects for the inventory and the answers.

IT architects monitor life cycles, among other things, to anticipate changes to the IT environment.  

• Technology Life Cycles
• Product Family Life Cycles
• Make-Model Life Cycles

There is too much to track, even with Gartner and similar services.

So this becomes a collective effort. All of IT and concerned power users.

Sysadmins take leadership for tracking Operating Systems, Postmasters for messaging systems, NetAdmins for connectivity. There are plenty of IT components to go around.

IT architects can distribute this role with tools for:

• Managing lists of things to track.
• Automation of the data update task.
• Sharing, organizing, finding, and prioritizing news.
• Letting experts compose their observations and commentary, in both structured and narrative ways.
• Subscription to updates on specific technologies, vendors, product families, and product models.
• Succession and transition planning.

The IT architect becomes:

• evangelist for the life cycle management process and
• editor in chief for contributing experts.

Hmmm. IT architect v.3.5.6 is on its way out, to be replaced by v.3.5.7. Let's get the word out and start shopping for vendors...