Shedding Light On the Black Art of IT Management

Cathy writes "An article by Harvard's Andrew McAfee tells nontechnical managers how not to get overwhelmed by the 'drumbeat' of IT projects. McAfee breaks down IT into three categories — functional, network, and enterprise — and says that this framework 'can also indicate which IT initiatives are going to be relatively easy to implement and on which projects executives should focus. In that light, IT management starts to look less like a black art and more like the work of the executive.'"

Comments

It's unfortunately just like any other management

[briancnorton]

A lot of IT/IS people have a very distorted view of the world in thinking that their profession is the mission of their organization. IT is about facilitating the people that do the real work. IT is easy; the business uncertainty is low, 90% of the work can be done by trained chickens, and there is no production requirement. LITERALLY all you have to do is keep stuff working and upgrade from time to time.

But that's not how it works in all too many companies. For an enterprise with 10,000 people producing, you have 1,000 IT people to sit around and think of new ways to justify their continued employment through bureaucratic process and unnecessary BS. IT managers, just like all good managers enter the resource war with their colleagues for more money, more staff, more power, etc. What is forgotten is that meeting requirements has essentially a fixed price.

I have worked in industry a long time with a bunch of carbon-blobs that do anything they can to impede the real work. IT is not a mission, it's a f@#$king support role worthy of no higher esteem than janitors, accountants or lawyers. Now get off your pedestal and fix my god-damned computer you FU%$&ing OBSTRUCTIONIST!!!