As MMS gained acceptance within Life Time, the need for a testing and quality-assurance infrastructure led to the creation of Testworld, an environment that emulates the production MMS system.
People Who Need People
Life Time's IT department now has a staff of 48 people, comprising four main parts: operations, software, project management and administration. The well-defined roles of the technology teams is impressive, especially when you consider that none of it existed a few years ago. We've seen many start-ups forego structure when in high-growth mode, leading to flat organizations with no clear reporting responsibilities and weak role definition. That model does work--for a while. Then things start to unravel. But Life Time created an IT organization that provides logical career paths for its employees and should be able to scale as the company pursues its 50 percent per year growth goal.
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Nice Fit
Thank goodness for open source. IT standardized on Cfengine to configure and manage Life Time's Unix servers, allowing for a complete server rebuild in about an hour. Who GNU?
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In the near future, however, scaling won't be an issue: A hiring freeze has been placed on the IT organization as the company prepares for continued facility growth and an anticipated IPO. Increasing efficiency has become the main focus. Streamlining project-request processes has helped better track line-of-business initiatives that require IT's help (for more on the decision-making process, see "Where the Gloves Come Off").
The Sky's the Limit
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
