What is the single largest contributing factor to a successful IoT initiative? In my opinion it is finding, and keeping, your own personal McGuyver. Yes, that Jack-of-All-Trades with enough diverse work experience to scream  “Job Hopper!!”. But wait, experience across multiple industries means an ability and willingness to learn and multiple skill-sets in a single person. A great technology manager is someone who is skilled enough to make but does not need to be a master.

Todays most valuable asset when it comes to designing, developing, project managing, deploying, and managing IoT networks is someone who can fill the role of a general technology manager. They don’t need to be a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in anything, what we want them to be is a Subject Matter Generalist. Hear me out – the ideal team leader for abstract IoT projects (and that’s what every single one is, abstract) or R&D projects is not necessarily the most credentialed candidate. It’s not the Python, MondoDB or Hadoop genius, it’s not the MBA rising star and it’s not the guy promoted from sales. No, it’s the person who knows a little about a lot, finally. Someone who has used and seen enough technologies to enable them to create without constraints, solve integration and workflow  issues and define automated routines for every step along the way, and yes, they are usually doing all of this in parallel. Far too often the manager who would have been the perfect fit is overlooked for all the wrong reasons and that’s a shame.

Legacy, Brand Name or DIY?

The unfortunate part of going the brand-name route is you quickly become confined to their ecosystem. That means your your chosen vendor will not have the same needs and timeframes as you do.

OpenSource or Vendor-centric?

Your commitment means you have surrendered your innovation and application for that of a vendor. That’s not a good position to be in if your mandate is to innovate.

The one thing I like most about OpenSource is you have the facility to change anything. You don’t need the ability to. That skill can be bought time and materials as needed. Zero overhead. Another bonus is a very skilled developer community backing almost all noteworthy platforms. If you can’t make it work someone else will, either for FREE or for a nominal fee. I’d like to take a moment to recall receiving programming support like that from any Service Provider or as part of any Software Support agreement I have ever encountered. Or heard of. Ever. Nope. Nothing.

Focus on The User

I’m sorry to say but I think this is where every good intentioned ’emerging technology’ software development project inevitably comes flying off the rails. I would suggest at the 10% complete date you should insert a Milestone called “Ka-Boom!”.  Any large IT/Innovation Department project needs a good team with a lot of skill, enthusiasm, resources and some Pixie Dust. You also need a great and innovative project architect/manager otherwise you are just not going to pull something like this off. So when you launch your silver bullet of an IoT project with no clear goals, milestones or performance targets, no estimated ROI, no project specification vetted by actual users then you can only be sure of one thing, there’s still at least one round in the chamber.

It’s never too late to ask for help.