Start with why

I recently attended the VMware partner event Empower in Austria, this event is billed as the ultimate technical training event of the year! Thankfully I think it also lived up to the hype! Whilst VMworld is traditionally my opportunity to catch-up with technical content, you are also trying to network and discover new technology. Empower allowed me to focus purely on the technical content for 3 days. 

This blog, however, is not a review or run down on the conference but about one of the biggest take-away elements for me. On the final day of Empower I sat on a whole day livefire deep dive session covering VMware Identity Manager ran by Reinhart Nel. Reinhart is one of the most passionate trainers I have ever been educated by and the content he was delivering was put together by Peter Bjork someone I have known of for some time in the VMware EUC circles for his depth of knowledge in the EUC products. 

Whilst the whole session was really good, very in-depth and covered lots of areas regarding VMware Identity there was one section on design, that has stayed with me since. 

Reinhart covered the VMware design methodology for workspace transformation with the attendees (see below). This will be familiar to anyone that has sat a VMware or similar architecture design course before, I am sure. 

However, the area he pressed upon during the training was the need to ensure you always start with the why. All too often technical conversations start with the what (What technology!) and forget about the why or the how. I think this can also be true of the tasks we undertake on a regular basis as well. We are too quick to get on, get it sorted, complete the task and don't actually stop and think why am I doing this. 

This also connects well with another subject I have been speaking about recently regarding ensuring your have a well documented IT strategy and the importance of having and documenting a vision. You can watch my presentation from last years Define Tomorrow conference here >>  https://www.definetomorrow.co.uk/blog/2018/2/7/what-is-your-it-strategy

So thank you to Reinhart and Peter, I am now making this a personal mission. I want to get everyone thinking about the why, not only when approaching technical projects but also during their everyday roles. With greater clarity, you are able to ensure you are able to progress and not get stuck in the same old loop.