It is a fast life now. Setting up server used to be months compared to minutes of provisioning one in Cloud. First, you have to prepare and renovate a server room, if you do not have one. Then, the physical server may take weeks to arrive. After that, you have to purchase the required licences for the server operating system (OS). Installations and configurations will take another week or so before the server is ready for usage.
As application owner, it is a time consuming to conduct new proof of concept (POC) by going through all these steps to acquire a server. In many cases, we skip POC and move directly to project phase to save on these lead time. Now, POC can be easily implemented with Agile by Cloud. It is time to brace ourselves to a brave new world!
Why POC
The emergence of Cloud accelerates how we can do our proof of concept (POC). With the difficulty of getting hardware, POC is often avoided for conservative organizations. It is less risky to stick to proven technology and applications. Waterfall process also slow down the process as having POC adds cost and time. While these are common excuses of not having POC, the advantages outweighs the cons for new technology like Cloud. This is because POC will lower uncertainty and risk by exploration in real environment for many stakeholders.
Agile POC with Cloud
Cloud technologies have changed the mindset towards POC. The constraints of acquiring hardware are nearly eliminated and thus solving a huge lead time issue. Server provisioning templates or machine images can also be setup to iterate POC quickly with ease. The best timing is the adoption of Agile methodologies and Cloud technologies that fits the implementation of POC.
To POC or not to POC
From stakeholders view, there seems little disadvantages not to conduct POC to mitigate risks for new technologies. Business can evaluate the relevance with minimum costs before making decisions to invest in full implementation. Information Technology (IT) team can review new capabilities without plunging into unknown from preparation with POC. To POC or not to POC, you can easily decide with Agile and Cloud.
Danny Kwok 
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