What is Shift Left – The IT Strategy Every CIO Needs to Know

What does it mean to Shift Left? In the 24×7 world of Network, IT & Security Operations teams, “Shift Left” means moving processes and incident response work down a step lower on the “Operations’ Staircase.”

Why Shift Left?

The lower on this staircase a process or incident response can take place, the lower the cost it has to the business. And I don’t just mean dollars; I also mean productivity.

Think about your Subject Matter Experts (SME) and what gets them pumped up and excited to come into work. It certainly isn’t dealing with escalations and jumping on bridge calls. An SME has fought many fires over the course of time it took to climb the above mentioned staircase.

SMEs want to be working on innovative projects that are going to drive new revenue or building out automations and best practices for the others on the staircase to use. Their time is best utilized this way, so let’s give them the time and the ability to do it.

How Do I Shift Left?

Some might say, “Great, I love the idea, but the reason each team does the work they do today is because of their experience. How do you expect me to give a Level 1 Operator the ability to do more complex things only a Level 3 Operator has credentials for?!”

Dynamic Guided Procedures and Automation, the “Human-Guided” kind.

When an incident or event is picked up, or something needs to be done, don’t make Level 1 agents search through static documents for something that may or may not help them.

Prescribe to them an incident-specific or process-specific procedure to follow in an interactive and dynamic fashion. When they reach a point where they need credentials to take a next step, that next step should be automated (Let SME’s build it in a codeless builder), so they click a button, it goes out, hits a credential store, takes the action in the same way an SME would, brings back results in layman’s terms and then allows them to manually continue down the path to resolution, all inside the framework of your existing ticketing, monitoring, SIEM, or whatever system your team works from.

Resolve, is removing well over 30% OpEx in our customers’ NOCs, SOCs, Service Desks, and Command Centers, but we'd like to know...

What’s your Shift Left strategy like today? Do you have one?