Katrina Macdermid challenges technology leaders to ask a consequential question: are we improving the human experience, or simply making existing processes faster?
As an author, educator, and Co-Founder and Director of HIT Global, Macdermid brings human-centred thinking into IT service management. Through Humanising IT™, her work connects the needs of people with the governance, security, and operational responsibility required to deliver dependable services.
Her approach offers a valuable lesson in leadership: understand the experience before deciding how to improve it. A completed workflow can demonstrate progress, yet leaders still need to understand whether the person receiving the service can accomplish what matters to them.
Before you accelerate, examine
That perspective becomes especially relevant as organisations adopt AI. In her Humanising AI™ conference commentary, Macdermid questions whether organisations are using AI to improve IT experiences or automate what is already broken. For executives and practitioners alike, the implication is clear: examine the assumptions inside a service before accelerating its delivery.
Her 2026 book, Humanising IT™: The Experience Distortion of IT Service Management, explores how human needs and IT controls can pull service design in different directions. Using the Humanising IT™ Double Diamond Framework, she presents a structured approach to navigating that tension with empathy and accountability.
RecognitionHDI named Macdermid among its 2025 Top 25 Thought Leaders, and Pink Elephant inducted her into its 2026 IT Service Management Hall of Fame, recognising her knowledge sharing, advocacy, and contributions to professional practice.
What can leaders learn from her?
- Bring human experience into requirements.
- Listen for the friction that performance reports miss.
- Connect those insights to decisions, ownership, and service improvement.
For women building careers in technology, her work demonstrates the authority of combining professional expertise with a clear understanding of people. That combination belongs in architecture discussions, governance reviews, and executive decisions.
Macdermid captures her guiding principle in four words:
“It starts with people.”
Katrina Macdermid
Her work gives leaders a practical reason to keep those words close: the experience people receive is part of the outcome leaders are responsible for delivering.
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