vsbabu.org

What makes IT drain money?

Increasing organizational efficiency has been one of my pet subjects for quite a long time. Last week, I was out for 5 days for a conference about re-aligning IT structure. The weekend after the conference, I read about how different organizations go about IT. Mind you, these organizations are the ones that have IT as a support function.

I reached some conclusions and generalizations about what makes IT a money sink in the industry.

1. Emphasis on career managers who just don’t have the pulse on IT.
2. Management and analysts that regularly need input from "skilled" personnel for decision making.
3. Delegation of accountability.
4. Vision doesn’t flow unimpeded from the top.
5. Innovations' flow from bottom to top is impeded by career minded managers. Many times, if a guy at the bottom innovates, that is hijacked by his supervisor. Meaning, the guy never innovates any more!
6. Silo building by managers and employees. People just don’t want to get out of their comfort zones (even if the comfort zones are no longer relevant).
7. “My (silo) system solves all your problems!” If there is no culture of candor, no one will say one size doesn’t fit all.
8. Political application of solutions that only solve political problems, not real-world problems. Often, contracts are handed out considering the vendor friends.
9. Re-engineering projects. For example, when a new manager is hired, s/he wants to re-engineer existing system(s) with some new technology. This sinks most money with least results.
10. Management structure that adds to the beaurocracy. I’m tempted to think that Abraham Lincoln would’ve told “Beaurocracy is by the management, for the management, off the people”.
11. Almost religious devotion to the belief that a particular methodology will solve all the issues. No. Have a lean and agile methodology, then customize it a little bit to suit the problem.

Here are some dictums I’m going to keep in mind when it is my money and my heart.

1. Laziness is the mother of all inventions.
2. Lack of funds is the mother of all innovations.
3. Lack of staff is the mother of all collaborations.

I work for a non-profit, so we really need to keep thinking about the money. I’m grateful that I didn’t work for a dot.com when money was nowhere in the equation. People really need to get a grip on the fact that money is always a significant part of the equation. There is no magic wand in IT that says the more you spend, better it becomes.

There is also a common misconception that “systems integration” implies putting all your eggs in one basket. This is a really bad idea. First of all, no one system can do all you want to do. If you get one system that does one thing and one thing well, and has open standards for date interchange, that is what you want to buy. Make your IT staff spend human resources on building the bridges that make the systems integrated.