BIMODAL IT

HOW TO PREPARE YOUR COMPANY FOR

INNOVATION AND MAKE YOUR IT PART
OF THE BUSINESS CONVERSATION

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BIMODAL IT?
Bimodal IT is a concept developed by the Gartner Group in
2013, as a new way to manage IT services in organizations.
This definition differentiates traditional IT – known as Mode
1 - which focuses on stability, safety and accuracy, from non-
traditional IT, Mode 2, which is more exploratory, and focuses
on agility and speed to develop solutions in different situations.

After defining these two modes to identify and prepare the way
in which companies can manage their technological changes,
it’s worth to follow the details of each Mode separately. Mode
1 manages the existing corporate systems, ensuring that
all liabilities work coordinately, and Mode 2 aims to generate
innovation as a mission to face new challenges,
new horizons and conquer new markets.

In Mode 1, value generation is based on performance,

while Mode 2 focuses on revenue, brand and UX (user
experience). In seeking for new development partners,
Mode 1 builds alliances with corporate suppliers, while
Mode 2 develops partnerships with new and small
suppliers. In the search for talents, Mode 2 should find the
non-conventional, generalist types, while the conventional
and specialized ones continue to be talents for Mode 1.

Now, before we delve deeper into the subject, let’s take a good
look at the concept of technology and its application in the
business environment, influencing the business change process.

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3
KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY
By definition, technology is the product of
science that seeks to solve problems of any
nature. The correlation between knowledge
and creativity transforms the environment,
whether in industry, engineering, medicine,
computer science or in arts.
The interpretation of technology in the
business environment allows us to decide
which action should be taken in order to solve
a given problem, or to create a new solution.
This technological knowledge makes room for
new skills and new technologies that are even
more innovative and revolutionary.
With this clear and updated concept of today’s
business world, information technology is no
longer set apart from the company’s business
and starts to become the key part of the
corporate gear, moving the business in the
right direction. Technology is one of the keys
for success, but only when used with market
intelligence.
Then, the challenge becomes finding or
understanding what is the reality between
the IT and the organization’s business,
how they are interacting, if they are working
with the same reasoning or if they are too
far from the main goal. The technique that
brought information technology to its current
stage is transforming as businesses evolve.
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WE LIVE IN A DIGITAL WORLD
Once again, as we mention the business
world as an update of the digital business,
an analogy has to be analyzed. During the
industrial revolution, our society learned to
do business with the technologies available
at the time. It took decades of secret
negotiations before innovations could
handle the demands of the market.

A car could only be black, and for many years,

they were only made black. We evolved and
today the revolution is, what some specialists
call, “the knowledge era”, where information
that used to belong to a few, is now easily
spread to many.

Being digital is having a technological and

critical view of the business strategy and
then defining new ways to operate and
generate revenues.

Digital business is transforming people’s

and companies’ lives. Facebook, Apple, Uber,
Airbnb, are part of this knowledge era.
Born in the digital era, they use the
advantages brought by the digital life to
succeed. What about organizations that were
not born in the digital era? The world’s older
and major companies have already seen the
market potential in the digital life, and they
are prioritizing the improvements brought by
technological innovation to business
by enhancing the user’s experience.

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WHY DO COMPANIES
NEED A BIMODAL IT?
It’s simple: even a thriving digital business
model needs to manage innovation, bringing
it to the center of the companies’ technology
departments. This connection between
the agility of startups with the safety of
traditional IT departments requires a realistic
fusion to avoid unsettling the infrastructure
as we know today. The organizational
operation depends on the responsibility
brought by traditional IT.
IT impacts business results and cannot be
remodeled overnight without investments
and cultural change. This is one of the most
difficult factors to deal with when it comes
to technological innovation. We can conclude
that the change does not confirm the popular
phrase, “you should not mess with a winning
formula”, but it is still necessary to have a
winning team that experiences the company’s
everyday activities and keeps everything in
order, so new ideas and new projects may
be developed.
Thus, developing the Bimodal IT was one
of the ways to make this transformation.
The solution was to transform two different
realities into mode 1 and mode 2, and put
both processes to work together. While mode
1 keeps accuracy and safety, mode 2 brings
agility and innovation. This does not imply that
mode 1 needs to stop innovating. This is not an
option. Innovation is a part of all the company’s
departments and it has to be cultural, but in
regards to the development of new applications
and due to the market’s competitiveness
with startups outside the company, mode 2
earned its stripes and will demand different
investments and goals from mode 1.
Since it is an innovation company within
another company, there is an extraordinary
range of benefits. With a ready infrastructure,
budget allocated for the project, human
resources aware of the modes’ division,
which makes the recruitment of talents
easier and favors the qualification of new
talents, the Bimodal division becomes an
ally for the companies’ businesses.
Merging the knowledge of the traditional IT
with the agile IT energy, modes 1 and 2 receive
a different attention from the organization’s CIO,
transforming an IT area for business. This is
a new way for the IT department to develop
solutions for companies, and for companies to
find solutions for their needs and objectives.
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CHANGING TO BIMODAL IT
Every change goes through an approval and
adjustment process. This needs to occur in
all areas of the corporate system, involving
changes in culture, methods and tools.

BIMODAL IT MODE 1 MODE 2

Objective Reliability, SLA Agility

Value Performance Revenue, brand, UX

Approach Waterfall, V-Model Agile, Kanban

Governance By plan and approval Empirical, continuous

Partners Corporate suppliers New, small suppliers

Talent Conventional, specialists Non-conventional, generalists

Culture Centered in IT Centered in business

Time cycles Long (months) Short (days, weeks)

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CULTURAL CHANGES
To make a change, it’s necessary to know the
organizational culture. The truth is that, in many
companies, IT is not considered a part of the
business, but a part of problem solving.
In general, IT is focused in keeping the systems
working, and this is why IT was managed the
way it has been: as a centralized functionality.
All departments are integrated to some
degree with IT, but few business decisions
arise from it. With the arrival of the digital
world, Mode 2 directs IT as part of the
business. This view must reach the traditional
IT. If not, the communication failures between
the business world and the digital world are
inevitable, bringing unsolvable problems to
the corporate environment.
TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS
THINKING WALK SIDE BY SIDE.
+ Hackatons
The company’s environment must also shift
to Bimodal IT. A prepared environment is
required for ideas to come to life. An example
of how this change can take place in the
organizational environment is the Hackaton,
a programming marathon where hackers,
programmers and developers in general meet.
The event is organized to bring the right
people and tools together for the appropriate
goals, allowing participants to optimize
their creativity and innovative spirit.
This event shows an upgrade regarding
Mode 1, which was already introjected
by most of the professionals and master
managers of a generation who built IT as
we know today. Hackatons help upgrade the
IT environment, which was programmed to
perform actions to keep safety and precision
at the center of the daily balance.
A PREPARED ENVIRONMENT IS
REQUIRED FOR IDEAS TO COME
TO LIFE.
In order to establish Mode 2, we can also count
on innovation strategies, such as creating new
and more suggestive installations, adding
next-generation talents to the team, such as
those born after 1995, those who have been
experiencing the digital world since their
first steps.
Their ideas, inspirations, plans, and challenges
are different. It’s necessary to encourage
co-creation with different professionals,
while paying attention to unexplored markets.
The judgment and style of such generations
is going to change the organization, which will
surely need Mode 1 to keep the application
running, while new plans for Mode 2 are drawn.
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+ Maker Spaces
A tool that has been well regarded abroad and
is gradually coming to Brazil is the Corporate
Maker Spaces. Maker Spaces are exciting for
the creative minds: as in an innovation garage,
it brings people with different profiles together
in a physical space, with access to the
resources necessary for designing concepts
and new products. This simple installation
may not leverage disruptive innovation
generation, but a culture that rewards
innovation may be able to achieve this.
+ Innovation Labs
In addition to the Maker Spaces, the Strategic
Innovation Laboratory may serve as the
development environment for Mode 2,
which, through the abductive thinking
used in the Design Thinking methodology,
for instance, allied with the ability to
generate different views of the
multidisciplinary teams, leads to the
perception of hidden opportunities
(Download here our Innovation Lab e-book
and read more about it!).
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METHODOLOGICAL CHANGES
The work methodology changes with the
arrival of Bimodal IT. IT governance needs
to be limited to managing only a part of the
area’s efforts, legitimizing innovation and
clearing some space to more flexible methods
and actions.
This step of the challenge will require
perseverance. Mode 2 works differently with
space and time, in order to break down the
traditional barriers of the business, or to
simplify it for those who want to do things
differently. Some methodologies may be
applied to understand the challenges of
this change:
+ Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a methodology focused
on the end user’s needs and it may be used
in several situations. In Bimodal IT,
its application brings numerous benefits.
The method, which starts with an immersion,
enables direct observation of the problem that
needs to be solved, analyzing quantitative and
qualitative data, and assessing what are the
stakeholders’ difficulties and motivations.
Based on the analysis of the information
researched, a brainstorming session and
prototyping test are carried out, providing
fast and accurate assessment results.
Design Thinking’s mission is to identify the
real needs of the parties involved without
requiring an intermediary to do the job.
+ Lean Startup
Lean Startup promotes increased
success probability in disruptive business
implementation, since the approach seeks
to generate knowledge in an extremely
uncertain environment. It is not responsible
for generating ideas, but it assumes that an
idea can generate a new business.
Aligned with Design Thinking, the Lean
Startup method may design a much richer
initial idea due to the methodology applied,
without demanding major financial and staff
investments.
+ Scrum
Scrum is a methodology that lends flexibility
and simplicity to the management of software
development projects (Agile Methods).
It focuses on the perception of what is being
developed in that project, which provides a
learning process to the team. This knowledge
is then applied to new Scrum phases. It is a
dynamic methodology that may be used in
Modes 1 and 2.
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TOOL CHANGES
Bimodal IT model brings several innovations
to the IT management. One of these
tools is Cloud Computing, which opens a
huge opportunity to reduce complexity in
infrastructure management.
+ Cloud Computing
It is a great tool that speeds up the operation,
and aims to greatly increase the company’s
ability to deliver new products, including
an increase in deployment frequency and a
decrease in failure rates of new releases,
as well as recovery time from disasters
caused by launching problems.

Cloud computing solutions provide agility
by simplifying the operation and decreasing
expenses with infrastructure, allowing the
use of resources in other areas and making
IT costs flexible. Cloud Computing makes
much more with much less, and the time
saved in application development enables the
creation of new projects with teams working
collaboratively.
DevOps automates the cloud computing
processes by making resources available in
instances (e.g., EC2) that may be created for
a single Hackaton, for instance. It may be shut
down definitely, paused for adjustments,
or for cost reduction. Other Cloud Computing
tools used in DevOps are the Elastic Map
Reduce and Elastic Load Balance from
Amazon’s Web Services.

Content storage and distribution are new

competitive advantages. Remote project
management or safe data transmission in
real time, such as streaming, lends agility
to training and communication flow between
branches and parent companies. One way
of applying the cloud as a Bimodal IT tool is
through DevOps;

+ DevOps

Used as part of the process in the Mode 1 of

the Bimodal IT, we have the DevOps, named for
its role in bringing developers and software
operators together. Moreover, DevOps also
provides great value in terms of cost reduction
for Mode 1, allowing its financial resources to
be redirected to Mode 2.
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SO, WHAT ROLE SHOULD
THE NEW IT HAVE?
The Bimodal solution varies from case to
case and there is no feasible and definitive
solution to implement Bimodal IT. Identifying
the necessary changes and defining paths for
technological innovation are two of the most
important responsibilities of the current CIO.

IT AND BUSINESSES ARE NOW A

SINGLE UNIT IN A DIGITALIZED
WORLD. IT’S CRUCIAL TO DEFINE THE
NEW ROLE OF IT IN THIS SCENARIO.

The new IT is comprised by a team that has

fast absorption of the trends applied to the
development of new applications. They should
also be able to identify and try new business
models and new ways to find creative
solutions that change the business view,
overcoming adjacent barriers.

Performing tests and generating hypothesis

to find options in order to face the challenges
along the way has to be done constantly.
Today, IT has tools to produce quantitative
analyses that open a wide range of
possibilities of understanding never
seen before. The major benefits from
these analyses can be seen in the
business’ redirection. This information
should guide the way, lending more
precision and assertiveness to the results.

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ABOUT MJV
CRAFTING BUSINESS TRANSFORMATIONS
THROUGH DESIGN THINKING AND DIGITAL
STRATEGIES

Since 1997, MJV Technology & Innovation has been working with
some of the world’s largest companies on their business challenges.
Based out of offices in Europe, the United States and Latin America,
the consultancy now has a multidisciplinary team of more than
300 members.

MJV is composed of three pillars structured in complete synergy:

- Business innovation: development and implementation of

innovative solutions to reduce costs, increase revenue and generate
new business models.

- Technology consulting: development and implementation of

costumized services on Business Intelligence (BI), IT and Internet
of Things (IoT).

- Digital strategy: Development and implementation of corporate

strategy and user experience in a way that the digital mindset
becomes intrinsic to the business model.

We believe innovation lies in the alliance of design principles and

technology. For us, empathy, creativity and user centered processes
lead to relevant and impacting solutions that generate real value
for business. MAURÍCIO VIANNA
Global CEO, PhD
Distinct challenges require diverse approaches. Therefore, mvianna@mjvinnovation.com
we combine diverse expertise – Design Thinking, Service Design,
Gamification, User Experience, Big Data, Lean Methodology, Internet YSMAR VIANNA
of Things, among others – in order to transform complex challenges Chairman, PhD
into innovative solutions. yvianna@mjvinnovation.com

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