If you have never been to the Hoover Dam, you should. But before you go, let me recommend a book to you that will give you a new appreciation for this modern marvel and how closely it ties to our more modern technology stacks within our organizations. The book, “Big Red” by author John Haase tells the story (with some fiction filling to make it more interesting) on the building of the Hoover Dam, just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. The book chronicles the difficult challenge of damming the Colorado River to produce a reservoir of water for the western United States that would soon become a flood control mechanism, major power generator and a supply for irrigation water. Interestingly, the largest challenge was how to build the dam while continuing to allow the waters of the mighty Colorado River to continue to flow. This outrageous undertaking during the 1930’s seemed like a mythical feat with minimal technology and powered resources (remember powered vehicles had only been commercialized 20 something years earlier).
The first step was to build a sub-architecture of tunnels around the basin that would allow the waters to continue to flow. Over the course of two years, crews carved out four tunnels, each 6 stories tall, in the sides of the canyon wall with substantial infrastructure that would allow the massive waters to be diverted from the future 726 foot wall which would become the structure to hold back the mighty waters of the Colorado. The crew finalized the outlet tunnels in 18 months, 11 months ahead of schedule. Prior to the actual completion of the tunnels, the waters had been diverted enough to begin the massive construction of the Hoover Dam. While the tunnels were in essence a temporary resolution, they are still in place today to use as an emergency water diversion and are used to propel the massive turbines that create enough power to run a city the size of Los Angeles. The Hoover Dam required the resources of 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete (enough to build a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York) and over 5 thousand men with 110 of those losing their lives in the construction.
Many years later, the parallel of the continuing raging waters of the Colorado while building the Hoover Dam and how we need to rebuild our enterprise architecture is hauntingly clear.
More relevant to most of us reading this, those of us responsible for our technology stacks now need to begin taking this same type of thinking to overhaul our massive technology infrastructures to take advantage of the quickly moving technology changes in our businesses.
Here I introduce the concept of bi-modal IT. The process of bi-modal IT, which is being covered by Gartner and the practice being implemented business individuals and consultants, can take an important lesson from this story from the 1930s.
Determining how to “divert” necessary integrated technology implementation away from the core systems and infrastructure to allow for the integration of contemporary technology enhancements is not a one year process, and requires vision and foresight. To accomplish this, we must determine: (1) which technologies are core to the business and cannot be changed (the dam), (2) which technologies can be “diverted” through other technologies and (3) determining which technologies will need to be replaced, decommissioned or enhanced to build a more dynamic enterprise architecture.
While this feat seems daunting and overwhelming, if the Hoover Dam could be completed within 5 years in a “bi-modal” fashion in the 1930’s with minimal automation, imagine what we can do with the immense technology and knowledge resources we have in 2024.