Yes, we talked about why people hate IT. But here’s the other side to it

by Susan Cramm

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Posted on Having IT Your Way: June 5, 2008 4:58 PM

The last blog discussed why we all hate dealing with IT—not the humbler classes, of course, but the crazy system that results in the IT seeming contradiction of expenditure too much to create too little, too late.

No doubt the current operating model is complete because an overhaul. Unfortunately, we’re stuck through it for the foreseeable that will be. We be possible to’t undo all we’ve built overnight, and even if we could, we dont’ have a new system yet. To borrow from a great CSN&Y song, we be seized of to “lover the one we’re with.”

Most of what we hate about IT is based in the unpleasant reality that the system is designed to guard ourselves from ourselves. It delivers complex IT services to a relatively unsophisticated and demanding “patron” who expects IT to serve their individual needs without regard for the benefit and risks to the willingness to make ventures. They say “Make it work according to me now!” and we have to build round that.

Building around that buyer creates all kinds of negative effects. It depletes ready money, perpetuates information silos, fragments processes. Sometimes it even causes laws to be broken. (See Sarbanes-Oxley and its causes).

I take up beforehand some of you don’t buy this and think I’m being over the highest place. For the doubters, check out this research about in what state the narrow pursuit of IT-business alignment negatively impacts business performance.

But moreover often we jumble hating the system with the people who work in it. We should have a passionate affection for the people in IT who are doing their most pleasant to tend the best of a bad situation. Let’s look at the 8 Things We Hate About IT from my last post from the vista of IT. Here’s why they deserve love, along with a little insight into what they think with reference to you:

We can recoil from. the…

But we have to love that IT…

1. Limited Authority

Creates governance that allocates money to reasonably balance set a value on and risk. Ensures systems are designed and delivered in a way that promotes usability, integration, reliability, and yielding disposition.

2. Missing Adult Supervision

Dedicates senior managers to strengthen relationships with lines of business and help make better IT decisions.

3. Financial Extortion

Bears the brunt of defending the ongoing costs of IT-enabled investments in spite of the fact that corporate management isn’t held accountable for deriving value to pay for these costs.

4. Projects Never End

Tackles unyielding projects and figures out in what manner to (ultimately) deliver (most of them) without adequate resources and involvement from the other parts of the business.

5. Helpless Help Desks

Provides OTJ training to an ungrateful user community to such a degree much as though much of this tedious labor could be eliminated whether they mastered the basics of the systems that support their business.

6. Outsourcers Who Run Amok

Fights hard counter to unnecessary outsourcing—many times to the state of putting their careers at risk.

7. Out of Date Geeks

Works long hours supporting old technologies that the company be possible to’t afford to upgrade.

8. Absence of Good News

Increases shareholder value for those organizations who horsemanship it far.

Many in IT understand that tide practices will cause the current IT hypothesis to collapse under the weight of future complexities (poignantly articulated by the question posed in Tim Gray’s comment to the last blog stigmatize, “What admitting that this is as good as it gets?”). They also perceive that the clew to a better future is to dramatically increase corporate guidance’s IT IQ (thanks to Vaidya Nathan for sharing his narrative and posing these questions, “Don’t you think it is a bigger risk that something so important to you is opaque to you, the one and the other at understanding level and management level?” and “Don’t you think you need to fasten on concrete steps to reduce the opacity?”)

The require in front of us is to create a future where the capacity to innovate isn’t limited by dint of. the size or shape of the IT organization. Next time, we’ll address the question, “If we could build a new IT operating model from scratch, what would it look resembling?”

I would love it if you would take a moment out of your busy day and share why you love IT, and your view of its future.