Slashdot Mirror
Why "Running IT As a Business" Is a Bad Idea
snydeq sends along a provocative piece from Infoworld, arguing that the conventional wisdom on how IT should be run is all wrong. "Bob Lewis dispels the familiar litany that 'IT should be run as a business,' instead offering insights into what he is calling a 'guerilla movement' to reject conventional 'IT wisdom' and industry punditry in favor of what experience tells you will work in real organizations. 'When IT is a business, selling to its "internal customers," its principal product is software that "meets requirements." This all but ensures a less-than-optimal solution, lack of business ownership, and poor acceptance of the results,' Lewis writes. 'The alternatives begin with a radically different model of the relationship between IT and the rest of the business — that IT must be integrated into the heart of the enterprise, and everyone in IT must collaborate as a peer with those in the business who need what they do.' To do otherwise is a sure sign of numbered days for IT, according to Lewis. After all, the standard 'run IT as a business' model had its origins in the IT outsourcing industry, 'which has a vested interest in encouraging internal IT to eliminate everything that makes it more attractive than outside service providers.'"
He actually hit the nail to head with this. This is the thing most people working with IT or geeky professions miss, and why they think everything free and such is so great movement. Business DOES NOT work on mere technical things. Nothing in the world does.
This all can be really put into one line: People don't care what you do. People care about results of what you can enable them to do. If you provide that, great! If you dont and jab about "better ways" to do things while costing time and money, then.. sorry, but bye bye.
As a more slashdot friendlier terms, do you really care how a pizza place makes your pizza? No. You only care about how good it tastes when you eat it.
I work for a large insurance company in the UK. I'm a 'senior developer' if you like. One of my biggest gripes? The notion that work on the website - for a purist such as myself (and web designers and editors that also work on the site) - is subject to zero requirements, the 'customers' want everything for nothing, time-based 'estimates' that are taken as the law of the land. Every approach the customer wants you to implement is never in the right frame of mind for how the web works (noone understands the medium in which they're presenting to the customer outside). Your work is governed, oriented and OK'd by people who have no interest in how to do things properly. Fat-cat bosses who think their 10 years experience in Fortran 30 years ago makes for true understanding of how a website should work. Their way, no matter how stupid it seems to you the unenlightened one, is the right way. Trust me, I'm a fat-cat!
What ends up giving way? Quality. And it pisses me off. I can't do my job properly. Code reviews, unit/mock/functional testing, analysis, UML *all* have to give way because of all the above and just to get it out on time. Maintenance costs increase, but as long as it's out of the door it's OK. Would you build a house without blueprints? Would you remove an accountant's calculator from their desk because *you* don't work that way? Nope. [Excuse the crude analogies, they still get the point across]
The following sums it up well:
I've always hated this is approach to web development and steering change on websites. It's backwards. Archaic. Frustrating.
ilovegeorgebush
I actually went and read the article (I know as a /.er, I'm not supposed to, and I apologize). The whole thing sounds like a cheap excuse for providing even LESS customer service than IT departments deliver already (and most IT depts I've worked with have already been FAR from customer-friendly). When I'm working on an important project, and need a critical piece of software or hardware upgrade, I certainly don't expect IT to drop everything and come running immediately. But I damn sure don't expect them to tell me "Sorry, but we don't answer to you as an individual anymore--we have our own grand plan now and, if you want an upgrade, you'll have to present the big picture at next year's board meeting. We don't install specifics."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
They said the same shit ten years ago. When they did, buncha geezers yelled that they told them way before that. And then...
That's just it. Stay right there. I'm just gonna blow up my lawn.
While I do agree that running IT like a business is often not the best way to go about it, some of the things said in the article are simply bizarre. For example, what does this even [b]mean[/b]:
Instead of reacting to users, he should be their peer. Primarily, I asked him why he didn't transition from building Web apps to instead creating a solution using cloud technology and true mobile devices like BlackBerrys, iPods, and emerging tablets. He could offer a better solution, at about a quarter of the cost.
While buzzword compliant it doesn't really mean anything.
Why is he dead wrong? Because his definition of a business is a 'arms length relationship' between customer and provider. His IT 'business' targets delivering the lowest possible acceptable product and uses monopoly power to set the price. While there are definitely IT shops run like this it is a terrible model for an actual business. You will never hear a successful non-monopoly business pushing a strategy of separation from the customer and merely adequate service.
This might be a guerrilla movement to change things and certainly IT shops run as he describes should be change, but that change should be reorientation of IT toward supporting business operations and integration of custom IT skills into business projects. It should include education within business units about the capabilities (and costs!) of a professional IT department. Abandoning the concept of IT being a business relegates it to what... a hobby? In any case it's the first thing on the chopping block when the budget cuts come down.
If you run a factory, that's true. In almost every other business, it's not.
IT makes 90% of what goes on in a modern company possible at all. ERP, CRM, CMS and about three dozen other "tools" are as vital to a company today as hammers and workbenches were to a craftsman hundreds of years ago. Janitors aren't. They clean up and we don't want to miss them, but they don't run the company.
IT isn't the brain of most non-tech companies, but it certainly is the heart - it keeps the blood/information flowing through the veins/channels. Going even a few hours without it is noticeable in most companies, IT going down for a day is the corporate equivalent of a heart attack.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Here is the problem with most businesses, is that often the lowest paid employees handle customer service. Should IT departments focus more on good customer service, even if their "customers" are fellow employees in the company? Certainly. But this is a failing of all businesses.
Focusing on customer service may in fact entail paying more to hire better employees, and spending cash on training. How many businesses are doing this?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
So essentially, implemented behavior by an entity, would end up benefiting the source who suggested it, which wasn't part of the entity to begin with. This, it turns out, is a bad idea.
I get the feeling that the business industry across the board has been inundated with bobble heads, yes men, and PHB's. After inspecting the market over the last several years, I'd have to say that this is confirmed.
Posting anonymously for my protection. As a long time sysadmin and somone who provided phone based tech support for a couple years as well, I hate the whole IT a business thing. Whenever I hear a manager say something like "we're here to serve the customer" and they mean other employees, it tells me that the manager fundamentally doesn't understand how good IT practices work. As a sysadmin, I'm supposed to have the power to tell a co-worker that the password they are using is too weak or that they need to use this program instead of that. Or that we can't do what you want on the server or network because its too insecure. They shouldn't have the right to override the technical decisions of people with more experience with them. Especially when it comes to security.
Employees are not customers, they are employees. They are paid to do their job and follow the rules. If they can't, they should be let go.
The article highlights the flaws of poor communication skills, attributes these flaws to "IT as a business", and then suggests a new method...which is just as susceptible to communication flaws.
I dig what they are trying to say, I really do. But it's nothing new, and certainly nothing beyond what we already have.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Bob Lewis dispels the familiar litany that 'IT should be run as a business
IT is a service, a service that makes your business run better. And the better that service is shaped to your business, the more adapted to how you work, the more efficiently your business operates. The biggest payback from IT is saving money. A dollar saved is better than a dollar earned. A dollar saved is pure profit. A dollar earned you have to subtract the cost of overhead and doing business.
Too many times IT people operate from a perspective that's more religion than service. The time to upgrade to Windows 7 is not when SP 1 comes out, it's when upgrading saves the company money. A service mentality does not try to force-fit technology where it doesn't belong. Maybe not everyone in the company needs Windows 7. Maybe the call center can use Ubuntu workstations, maybe the graphics departments work more efficiently with Macs. A service mentality focuses on what works best for the company and saves money, not what your technical people know and where they've invested their training. Yet I see that a lot. Not what works best, but what the techs know. Their expertise limits their technology choices instead of expanding them.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This concept will only work in an 'enlightened' company, ie one that IS IT. In a company that sells things or services, it's all based on how many beans you can count. If you have this completely integrated IT organization, how does the company keep the IT budget under control? Unless you segregate the work into it's own silo, and then yell it like those Burger King "Angry Whopper Onions", how will costs go down.
No one sees IT as a partner. We're not even a business unit in a company. We're a collection of desklamps and staplers. I've seen management boggled by the fact that a Windows SA doesn't know anything about tuning an Oracle database. "But you're IT!" I've seen very skilled people moved over into jobs they are not trained or qualified for, and then eventually let go because they didn't have the skills for the job.
I haven't seen many companies that don't down right object to the fact they have to pay for IT. They don't blink at ordering 1000 new business cards for all the sales people, but ask for a $50 piece of software and you might as well be Oliver asking for more pourage.
Outsourcing has just made it easier for them to do this. How are you going to have a strategic partner doing IT, when the IT person you are dealing with is loyal only to the contract you've signed with them and really could care less if the company is growing or not, as long as they get paid.
Yes, I'm bitter. I'd love to see the fantasy land where IT is cherished. Especially outside of an IT company. I haven't seen it.
Seriously - get overselves and STOP finding ways to make my job more difficult. MY job produces the revenue that pays YOUR salary.
To put it in a car analogy, it is like rolling through stop signs. It saves you one or two seconds each time you do it, but when you get caught you end up losing all the time you saved twenty-fold.
The "hoops" are in place for a reason. You may not get immediate gratification, but overall your job happens more efficiently.
As other people have said, IT is a support function for most businesses. In some cases, this can create an authority problem - the IT section is expected to do what ever the rest of the organisation requests, and also to then wear that cost. It also can mean that as the rest of organisation aren't in the "IT business" they don't know or don't allow for internal and ongoing IT originated work to be performed.
Because businesses are in th business of making money, there should always be a business case for what ever the organisation does, including the work that the IT section performs. The business case should identify how what is being requested either makes money or saves money.
The charge back model not only enforces requiring business cases, but also attributes the costs of the work back to where it both originates and where it should be providing a benefit.
The main drawback is that it can create a monopoly provider issue - if the senior management dictate that all IT work must be done by the IT section, then IT sections can be tempted to become profit centres, and therefore not be competitive. One way to handle that situation is to set corporate standards and requirements for IT itegration, and then allow sections outside IT to compete for the work.
It isn't a perfect solution, however I think one if it's fundmental benefits is enforcing the business case requirement - and having had to work on projects which don't necessarily provide the return to the organisation that they should, mainly because a business case wasn't done before the work commenced, I see real value in that.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I The whole thing sounds like a cheap excuse for providing even LESS customer service than IT departments deliver already (and most IT depts I've worked with have already been FAR from customer-friendly).
What it actually sounds like is providing more responsive "service" that amounts to commiserating over your unfulfilled IT related goals. Your project is important. IT wants to walk a mile in your shoes and really feel the pain of watching it flounder.
This way, failure is shared and everyone understands.
The fundamental problem with many internal IT departments and particularly with regard to the development of software is the lack of discipline that the customers have because of the absence of price as a constraining behaviour.
When you are a good external provider of bespoke software you end up being able to use the price of your overall service and in particular, intra project "changes" in order to make sure that the customer is disciplined about defining and holding to a realistic set of requirements. It is difficult to understate how critical this is to success. In most of the crappy internal IT departments that I have dealt with the only constraint that the customer has is time and as such everything "can be done" because they just change their requirments with no impact on their budget and so the project delays and slides inexorably towards failure.
This is without even looking at the issue of competing internal requests for limited IT resource where, assuming that the resource is limited, the best solution for the company as a whole is to provide the limited resource to the profit centre that can most afford to pay them, thus allocating the resource to the mest problems within the business. This particular point is a bit of an over generalisation but I feel that _more_ rather than _less_ business focus from the IT folk is the way to ensure less projects fail.
TFA, reasons that the IT department should go back to the business with "with a set of recommendations for how he thought he could deliver a superior set of solutions that would meet their needs in 2012". In other words act like a domain expert business whose services the customer would be willing to purchase and to whose advice the customer would be willing to listen to illuminate, improve or limit their requirments.
Why doesn't this happen? Because the vast majority of IT departments are not run like business and they have not demonstrated the expertise (through repeated success) to allow the actual profit centres of the company to be willing to listen to them.
Indeed rather than behaving less like a business IT should behave more like a business, or perhaps more acurately more like an entrepeneur with a goal of maximising profit and then
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Ideally, as someone who isn't in IT but uses technology, I like to think the IT guys are on my side. If something is broken, and I can't fix it myself, or something could be better and I can't improve it (due to lack of knowledge or resources or access), they're there to help me out. Setting up IT "as a business" fundamentally changes this way of thinking about things, though. My group then sees IT as a cost center: we want to use as little of their stuff as possible, or we might get billed for them doing stuff for us. IT sees us as customers to whom a bunch of crap can potentially be sold, generating revenue for their IT business.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'd say in general that outsourcing anything sucks. I suspect the only exception is if the business is very small - too small to occupy at least one full time person. After that, you're better off bringing it inside, whatever the role.
Last time I checked, programmers are in IT. At least where I work. Don't even get me started on developers (and I was one professionally for a year). Most of them couldn't tie their own shoes without forgetting to let go after they are done.
"[Fawaz] likens IT's proper role to that of an engineer designing a car."
Dammit!
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
"You'll get it when you get it" model.
it is actually an interpretive dance.
He actually hit the nail to head with this. This is the thing most people working with IT or geeky professions miss, and why they think everything free and such is so great movement. Business DOES NOT work on mere technical things. Nothing in the world does.
This all can be really put into one line: People don't care what you do. People care about results of what you can enable them to do. If you provide that, great! If you dont and jab about "better ways" to do things while costing time and money, then.. sorry, but bye bye.
Building Services keeps the lights on, AC running, water in the pipes and toilets unstopped but they don't really know all that much about the business process and don't need to. Depending on the structure of the company, IT may operate at that level and super-users in different departments handle the business side of the IT.
For example, IT maintains the servers for file stores, database, etc. The SQL administrator is in IT. There are two big products that run on the SQL server, one for accounting and the other for sales. The accounting product admin is in accounting. I'm the admin for the sales side and straddle IT and sales. I'm not really assigned to either department.
The problem here is sort of similar to what you hear about outsourcing. "Is it a good outsourcing company? Is it a bad one? Is it moral to send the work overseas? Will your outsourcing effort fail?" And the primary question really isn't about outsourcing at all or even IT but is a question of whether the company has its shit together. Do people really understand how they do business? Do they know how, when, why for the important stuff? Do they have business processes documented? Are they capable of putting all that stuff down on paper and not having it change two months later on a whim?
An architect can design a building for a company but if the company isn't sure what it wants or even what sort of business it's in, the architect cannot do anything but fail.
In dysfunctional organizations, a greater premium is placed on ass-covering than problem-solving. Nobody wants to accept responsibility and sticking your neck out is just asking it to get chopped. In this kind of environment, IT will be defensive, not wanting to take on more responsibilities or promise a higher level of service because that just invites more things to go wrong. And this balkanization of the corporate departments prevents the sort of cooperation and cross-training necessary for getting things done successfully. In a healthy company, the operations side knows what the hell it's doing and IT can learn how the business operates and suggest solutions that the operations side might not even know they should ask for. And likewise, operations people will learn more about how their systems operate and the full extend of the features they're not utilizing.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Most of the things he complains about would be bad practices for any business. How can a business keep customers at arm's length and expect to have a good relationship with them? How can a business let its customers completely dictate how they do their work? If you run a business, you are responsible for keeping it sustainable, and sometimes that means you have to say no to your customers.
Do you drop your trash on the ground wherever you please? Why not? You are far more important than the janitors, both by title and salary.
Why not let the janitors follow you around and clean up after you as you constantly change their job requirements? YOUR job produces the revenue for THEIR salary, right? They should accommodate your wishes at all times.
Oh, wait, if you did that, you'd just be an asshole. The amount of extra babysitting you'd require from the cleaning staff means other coworkers aren't getting the support they need.
Your petty "IT are just janitor schmucks" attitude is self-centered, narrow-minded, and utterly detrimental to the company as a whole. All you amount to is being the jackass that never flushes toilet 'cause he's too important.
I've been the wearer of many hats in both public and private IT organizations. I have been known to term IT efforts to IT managers (who are often there as non-technical sorts) that the effort is seen as a "Necessary Evil" IT costs money; equipment, software, employees, benefits, etc. The real benefits of the effort are often taken for granted and not seen (that is if you are doing it right). The fact is that business cannot survive or compete without some type of reliance on IT in its many forms. For management to continue to deny that IT exists and requires resources is irresponsible. IT is as essential as paying the bills, marketing, and sales; maybe more so. Pull the plug on the data center and see what happens. (Been there done that, by accident of course...)
IT departments and their "customers" are partners in accomplishing the tasks the company must perform to be successful (or simply stay in business).
When the "customer" is able to contort IT to their wishes to make their job easier, or when IT is able to contort their customers to their wishes to make _their_ jobs easier, the more the corporate mechanism falls apart.
Janitors don't just mop the floors and clean the toilets. Janitors also serve as maintenance staff at most companies of reasonable size. Good luck being productive at work when there isn't a toilet in the building that flushes, half the doors are stuck and the "air conditioning" blows 102 degree air all summer long.
A janitor cleans things up - and is not a carpenter.
A carpenter builds new things - and is not a janitor.
IT has to do both.
If either gets neglected, the company suffers.
I personally try and produce code that meets and exceeds the business requirement, and does so within the time-frame set by the business. The problem, I think is that software engineers, in general, are a bunch of perfectionists, and we like to hold off announcing a 'final version' until the last possible moment. (Google Mail was in beta for how long?)
What I have come to realize, though, is that it is not just the IT departments that feel this way. In general, there are some people in every department, of every company that belive that their performance would improve if only they had a greater measure of self-determination. Perhaps the number of people who feel this way is highest in IT, but it is certainly not exclusive to IT.
So what it comes down to, I feel, is that we are slowly drifting towards a business culture where the individual has more control over their job, and where sucess is measured by job satisfaction instead of economics.
At least, that's the direction I hope we are heading in.
It's been many years since I heard some common sense on this subject.
"IT must be integrated into the heart of the enterprise, and everyone in IT must collaborate as a peer with those in the business who need what they do"
Uhhh...you mean like a BUSINESS PROCESS inside any business? Yes. Then IT should be treated as a business process.
The problem with your comparison of Janitors and IT works is visual. If the Janitors are all laid off, it is noticeable (trash cans overflow, dust begins to settle, glass becomes smudgy, etc), whereas if the IT department is laid off, much of their work may go unnoticed immediately. People tend to ignore IT until something breaks.
pretty much means report a bunch of lies to accounting so they can produce reports that fester on managements desk.
IT is still young. And we have an extremely muddled labor pool that is mixed with young geniuses and out-of-date veterans, as well as idiot young guns and some older people who *really* know what they are doing.
The problem with this situation is that from everyone's own perspective, it becomes extremely difficult for everyone else to make the right decision.
A novice non-IT business is the perfect target for a one-stop shop type of IT outsourcing company. They will never truly understand what you need, teach you anything, or explain exactly what you are paying for. You will get propriety solutions and pay a heavy margin for maintenance. Yes, they will meet requirements, but this is far from ideal.
Another pitfall is hiring the true techie to *manage* an IT department or an IT solution. There is a HUUUGE difference between someone who excels at technical knowhow and accuracy, and someone who sees the whole picture, can work with people, and can make compromises when weighing non-technical priorities.
The best scenario for any company is to find a savvy insider early and hire them. This person might not be able to do everything themselves, but they will know good from bad. They will also be close to management and will be pragmatic about implementing the needs of the company. Give this person sufficient resources, and you are good to go. Of course, whether or not you hired such a person, you may never know. If you actually have such a person *in* management, then you are ahead of the curve.
One thing is for certain though. New businesses that embrace IT will have a distinct edge. If you work at a fairly young company that doesn't care about their web page, or is losing business to competitors that do, I would get ready to jump ship. Seriously, IT can make or break even a restaurant (eg. SEO and yelp management).
I love discussions like this - it amazes me how corporate IT can think of themselves like vendors, when they typically have minimal skills in that regard. I wrote about chargebacks a few years ago - the good and the bad ... http://bit.ly/6YeInd
See also ... http://bit.ly/EwsC ... lots of different ways to think about the business / IT relationship
- jpmacl
Not to mention the whole chance of crashing, if I follow your analogy correctly.
I'd liken it more to another professional area of the company. Take HR or Accounts for example, neither of those is an 'internal business unit' as they cannot be outsourced so readily - ok, you can outsource your accounts, but it'll just cost you more, and you still end up retaining your account managers and payments clerks. HR, no-one thinks twice about them being a business service that's integral to the business rather than stuff you can buy from the lowest bidder. Like the toilet paper vendor.
Ah, but the janitor(s) going on strike will not result in the CxOs being unable to go to the bathroom the very same day, a week later there might be a problem but they are not required to be available 24/7. If the lights in the upper floor hallway in building 5E start flickering your entire business won't grind to a halt, but if the the CFO is unable to logon because he managed to screw up his profile for the sixth time this month due to porn surfing there will be a problem. Not to mention what happens when shoddy ten year-old servers that IT has requested a replacement budget for since 2004 start going down...
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
The whole thing sounds like a cheap excuse for providing even LESS customer service than IT departments deliver already (and most IT depts I've worked with have already been FAR from customer-friendly/b>).
The whole point is that you're thinking about it the wrong way. There should be *NO* "customer" anything.
When I'm working on an important project, and need a critical piece of software or hardware upgrade, I certainly don't expect IT to drop everything and come running immediately.
What you *should* expect is for IT to be a part of the project from the beginning, rather than just being asked to provide something after the fact. They don't need to "come running" because they're already there.
The issue of requirements is one that I've always found interesting.
There always seems to be an assumption that customers know how to write requirements. Personally (from the position of a hobby coder who needs to use the services of professionals to get real applications written) I've always found it difficult to write intelligent requirements.
Don't get me wrong, I know that this is my fault, but I find that I need assistance from people who actually understand the ways that things _could_ be done and know the implications of the things that may be asked for. I always prefer to plan for a significant activity just to find out what I should be asking for. Motivation of the people who I ask for advice is important. If I (or the company I work for) pays the developer I know I can expect that they want to get the best results for the company as a whole.
I work in the aircraft industry and I've seen enough poorly chosen requirements for aircraft to know that this isn't a solely IT issue...
Tell that to SCO. For the past six years their business has been based on ruining IT for the rest of us. For a second opinion ask a patent troll. Even though it might be a bad idea it is certainly a good business for some of them.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
...than behave as if it's a self-licking ice cream cone. IT exists for the productivity of the other employees. All too often, IT folks lose sight of that and start feeling that they can call the shots and that the end users' needs aren't as important as IT objectives and IT vision.
IT's job is to facilitate the rest of the company with regard to technology. Period.
It's their job to make IT stuff work, make it work faster, make it more reliable, and easier to use.
Running it as a separate entity, or one in which the IT staff don't have to have a clue about the domain the company works in is foolish.
Question everything
Interesting article. From what I have observed over the past few decades, there has been a steady growth in ideology in business schools and economics departments. These ideologies are usually simplistic models or sets of ideas that are supposed to be broadly applicable. Many of these ideologies have come and gone like fads. Many of them, while useful, are not axiomatic. Business school graduates often treat the "management" skill-set that they learn in school as broadly applicable to any field. Thus, MBA graduates may move between extremely diverse positions. I know of one that went from managing a train manufacturing plant to managing a food manufacturing facility. Because he had no previous experience with working with food, he faced significant difficulties both in making the food plant operate smoothly, and in making a profit. He didn't have a clear idea of where he could cut within the operation without endangering food safety. He lacked both detailed knowledge of production methods, and had a poor understanding of scientific principles. Under the ideology of business school, this person's management skills should have been directly transferrable between many different fields. The reality on the ground was quite different
In the case of the topic at hand, it seems to me that one particular model, consisting of customers and service providers with all such relationships entail, is not optimally applicable to a specific situation (IT). The economy, and the world, is far more complicated and subtle than simplistic and faddish business school ideologies.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I work for a company that runs IT like a business. All of the management is fully engaged in financial matters leaving all of the actual oversight and management to the project and team leads who are already burnt out due to lack of numerous things including lack of staffing, lack of talent, lack of respect and increasing politics especially after recent round of layoffs. This business model works so great for us, I can't wait for our next group hug...
You would think businesses would understand the difference by now. However with most public companies focused on the next quarterly or yearly report, the operational factors seem to overwhelm the strategic, until something like a major recession slaps them upside the head. "IT as a business" and best practice frameworks for IT work well for operational tasks. Software development, among other functions of IT, are strategic tasks and those tasks will function best when well integrated with the needs of the business instead of the needs of business units. So manage operational functions like a separate business, but integrate strategic functions more closely with the business and use the data you gather at the operational level to inform those strategic decisions.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Running IT as a business is like driving an airplane:
It seems like a logical extension of known abilities.
In the situation, if you try a few driving techniques, they'll probably work out fairly well.
But the first time you try something that seems simple but works very differently, say try to turn left by turning the 'steering' wheel to the left, you're going to be sorry.
Making parallels between IT and business is what business people do when confronted with having to run IT based on their business experience rather than learning how to do it right. They are rationalizing using the tools they already have, and protecting their ego by trying to make the rest of the model fit them. When they try to turn left and end up pranging*, they can blame the IT department for not falling into line with the business model. They can use that excuse when interviewing for their next position and get the sympathy of all the other business people who commiserate with colleagues forced to work with the IT people.
Do your business-based IT manager a favor. Soothe his ego by telling him he drives like Mario Andretti. Then brief him on the basic differences between driving the track at Indy, and moving in 3 dimensions using pitch, yaw and roll, and how if he tries to take the first turn the way he used to, he's going to get a valuable lesson in roll, as well as in pranging. Then take him out for a few touch-and-goes and let him hold the stick for a bit on the level. Then sign him up for beginner's ground school, which would be learning to be a help desk droid. If you're stuck with him, you might just try to get him to learn to be part of the department rather than part of the problem.
And if he refuses? Fuck it, strap him in and let him solo. It won't take long. There's lots of these guys that the big kids upstairs want sent your way, for various reasons, and 'making IT work' may be the mantra but it's not always the reason.
Pranging, from prang v. (Brit.): To land an airplane nose first, usually at high speed, often under power, almost certainly by someone with no previous experience landing an airplane in that fashion. The lucky tend to learn to land in other ways after this, the smart learn to before this, the rest never get a second chance.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I see many misinterpretations of Bob Lewis's article.
If I understand him correctly, he is saying that IT should be integrated, not apart from the business. This is in fact what my book Value-Driven IT is about. (http://valuedrivenit.com/) Mark Lutchen, the author of Managing IT as a Business, wrote a foreword for this book.
However, the choice should depend on whether IT is strategic to an organization: if it is, then IT needs to be integrated, and should not be a separate internal business or a service.
If IT is strategic to an organization, it no longer makes sense to distinguish between technical issues and "business issues": in such an organization, technical issues *are* business issues. The key is to know what issues matter, and what issues don't.
This does not mean that there should not be an "IT department": there should, to manage infrastructure; but strategic IT should not be the province of a separate "non-business" group.
In my book I advocate for having a strategic "change management" group that spearheads and oversees strategic change, including technology deployment. This helps to ensure that the organization has a center of excellence for managing change, thereby reducing risk, reducing time to implement change, and increasing the agility of the organization.
I recalled my approach to IT from the developer PoV:
There is little point in being an IT customer when there are so many other vendors out there.
Of course, all my experience has been at places where it was possible to route around IT. I must confess this isn't necessarily a good thing. I'll never forget a certain manager's explanation along the lines of, "it's backed up... but please don't delete the 'data' folder". Yes, that's real. It was gigs of customer data. No, I won't say where. Ah crap, better post AC.
Seriously - get overselves
What's an overself? Clothes? Armor? Superego?
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Don't confuse problems stemming from bad management with problems stemming from a bad model.
The idea of internal customers comes from Total Quality Management. TFA bears absolutely no resemblance to TQM. TFA describes what happens when you have the old style business structure (divisions/departments) and a pointy-haired boss learns accounting are calling IT a "cost centre" and then mistakes an accounting technique for a management technique.
People like to blame accountants for this, but that's because... accounting is a different department. Sure, this "hairball" IT system I'm supposed to be in charge of is all someone else's fault, but that "chargeback" system, well accounting is in charge of that aren't they!
FWIW TFA is quite disappointing for Infoweek. It displays numerous hallmarks of a self-help book. It massages the ego by implying that yes, you are being looked down upon, you should be more important and given more freedom and control ("IT should relinquish its increasing stance as an order taker, and earn and advance its intended role as the qualified engineer of what makes a business hum"); it's all someone else's fault ("hard to get the business leaders to step up"); and genial bashing of accountants in order to be all like-minded and chummy ("full employment for accountants"). Ironic then that all does is suggest adopting a business structure that has been core material in accounting studies since Japan started making cars, all wrapped up in executive-speak babble and buzzwords (unsurprising given the reference material).
By the way, most of the time people seem to assume doing the whole integrated thing will automatically be more productive and satisfying. It can be, but don't for a minute assume it's also easier. One thing the traditional model does supply is a command structure and set procedures - take that out and everybody finds they have to do stuff that previously they associated with management.
IT people understand a developer's job about as much as a janitor does.
You are aware that a lot of IT jobs cite "B.S. in Computer Science or equiv." as a requirement, right? Sit a *nix sysadmin down in front of a terminal and tell him he needs to fix a bug in some C code, and he'll happily whip out vi, gdb, and gcc. Sit a Windows admin down in front of a Windows machine and tell him he needs to fix a bug in some C code, and he'll fire up Visual Studio (or mingw). They may not get it done as quickly or cleanly as a regular developer, but they're light years ahead of your average janitor.
Now reverse the roles. Sure, a dev will have an innate grasp for scripting, but he'll be just as slow if not slower to get IT work done. My home computer is easy to set up (and that's what devs gauge IT work by), but setting up a business desktop, where there are policies in place to ensure the security of the company's data, is a lot more difficult and requires planning. Setting up and maintaining the servers and networks even more so (those can't just take a reimage). Making all of the above function as a system to work efficiently is the end goal.
Seriously - get overselves and STOP finding ways to make my job more difficult. MY job produces the revenue that pays YOUR salary.
We'll have to talk to Information Security, Human Resources, and Legal about that. When you violate company policy by uninstalling a critical patch or by installing limewire or eDonkey, you open the company to risk, and stand to lose the company more money than I'd ever get paid for 60 years of service. Mordac, Preventer of Information Services, totally needs a twin brother: Cadrom, Enabler of Information Leaks.
I can hire 5 people from India for your salary and they will accomplish about twice what you do(all totaled).
They tried to outsource my department..it failed.
We were able to get rid of most of the developers since they're a dime a dozen.
I do both coding and 3rd level support and the support people are by far more competent with a computer than the developers who get lost outside their IDE.
Your software won't be worth crap if you can't get it distributed.
You've hit on one of the problems with the term IT. Some people think it applies to software development, others to help desk and infrastructure, or to HRs information systems. While it's easy to make the case they are all IT, i think it's a bad idea because programming is NOTHING like being a help desk techie or a sys admin. Different degrees, certs and career paths (and pay scales). Yeah, they all use computers and done by nerdy types, but the similarities end there. i can't program for shit and don't enjoy it. But i can make your network run.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Hey developer - all you do is list the steps involved in doing something. Usually, someone else tells you the job, and you just write down the detailed steps. Calm down. Writing instructions isn't a big deal - even if your instructions are in a language.
The problem is that fundamentally, every other 'business support' eventually finds that it cannot be ruled by business... and as such makes itself a profession.
Lawyers - check
Accountants - check
Constructions and other engineering fields - check
Trades people - check
Right now, I'm looking at the elevator and it has be inspected by a licensed inspector. Yet, I'm working on software that runs the very internet... and I know they can bring in someone who has no experience and no knowledge and no licensing to build and test the router?
Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?
Even something as simple as network management (CCNA style). No other field would let CCNAs operate routers. They'd all require a skilled person a degree and probably industry certifications (CCNP) to operate a basic router.
You can look at other fields like healthcare. They all turn themselves into a profession so they have something to stand on when faced with 'business'.
There are a lot of things a profession does
1. Ensures people are trained properly. Lawyers go through grad school, become associates, learn under a senior lawyer... Law is complex. You can't throw a new grad lawyer in the middle of corporate law. Yet, in engineering, I've been thrown into an issue where the core internet router of a major city was down... and I (the new grad software engineer) was thrown it to deal with the ISP and diagnose the problem.
2. Ensures Quality. You have a voice if you feel standards are being violated. Short cuts taken that threaten some higher values (security, stability...).
3. A sense of independence
You are in charge of this. No business person tells a lawyer how to do their job. Yet I'm amazed when business people decide how to run software or IT. Oh, just throw people at projects... that'll work. Don't value knowledge in the current code base. Sure!!!
I'm fully aware of the downsides of professions... there is no way technology would have been able to progress as fast if it were a true profession. People would use the profession as job protection.
I am fully aware of business' need to make a profit. I don't rant against that. But as all professionals we say... if you let me do my damn job... we'd save you money! Give me 5 professional software developers and 5 professional tests, and we'll do the job of 200. But I suppose being a business person with power trumps making money.
That said, I don't blame business people. I can only blame IT and engineers. We refuse to use professions. When we do get on top/management... we treat our underlings the way we were treated. Too many of us are timid and don't stand up for ourselves. How can we expect not to be trampled over?
If it's set up as a business, then people are less likely to ask for little things because they cost money. This can be bad, because it may make people limit their requests. However, it can also be good, because it means there are fewer bogus requests.
If IT is not set up as a business then it's very tricky to determine where time/money/effort should be spent because it's hard to know what requests are important and which ones are just would-be-nice.
There needs to be some sort of accountability between the other areas of the business and IT. One way of doing that is to force the other areas to pay for the work that they want to get done.
If the company is small enough, this can all be done informally. When you've got tens of thousands of people, it becomes a much different ballgame.
IT should be integrated into the very heart of the organization. Okay. But only on one condition: That the janitorial department is integrated directly into the board room.
Modern factories require more IT specialists than actual factory workers to operate them :-D
Reading these quotes I have really no idea what this guy is getting at (specifically) - and I have done basic IT as well as continue to work with IT directly...
Regarding "' To do otherwise is a sure sign of numbered days for IT, according to Lewis. After all, the standard 'run IT as a business' model had its origins in the IT outsourcing industry, 'which has a vested interest in encouraging internal IT to eliminate everything that makes it more attractive than outside service providers.'"
This sound like he is simply trying to keep IT jobs rather do what's best for the company. IT architecture and tasks should be transparent - and it should run smoothly. Outsourced IT is a pooling of IT resources and collaboration with peers. ...Whether its software based like Spiceworks or independent firms. In house IT know only one system. And one solution.
IT is losing its mystique and many tasks can be completed by node users as the use of networks etc become more familiar and common place. Keeping fulltime staff to monitor and do occasional maintenance is not cost effective. Cost effectiveness applies to everyone - including the janitors (which is why they are now outsourced).
In my experience:
Pipe explodes in bathroom. Janitor has plumber fix it this afternoon and has it cleaned up before I am back at work the next day.
Hard drive explodes in raid array. IT guy takes two weeks to look at it, then claims: oops, forgot to set up paging to notify when the first drive exploded several months ago. That was actually the second exploded drive and now I have to restore from backup.
Janitor++: IT guy --
Janitor sends notification two weeks early that he needs us to unplug our floortops and put them on our desks so he can wax the floor.
IT guy goes to work at midnight so nobody sees him, and installs patches that need server reboots. He reboots with no notification and kills my job halfway through a 2 day run.
Janitor ++ : IT guy --
I could go on
Every time IT has gone down the tubes at a company I've worked for, it's been just after a ticketing system was installed. This has the immediate effect of turning productive IT people--meaning folks that help _me_ be more productive--into ticket managers.
When IT is a business, selling to its "internal customers,"
Any business inside a business is a bad idea!! Businesses are *not* your friend. Think about it.
Eh? In every shop I've ever seen, software development is a sub-group within the IT department.
I'm an embedded software engineer, and I don't work in IT. In my company, all of us software developers have our own department, but our computers are owned and serviced by the IT department. The products our company makes have embedded CPUs and lots of software; IT is there to provide us with the tools to do our jobs.
The problem is that, for some reason, computer equipment is IT's responsibility, and comes out of their budget. So, as an engineer, if I need a $20,000 oscilloscope or whatever, I can get that, and it comes out the engineering department's budget. But if I want a $2,000 computer so I don't have to wait half a day to recompile our application, that's a no-go. So we're all sitting around with truly ancient computers (some running Win2000) and tiny monitors (= lots of scrolling) because the IT department doesn't want to buy new computers, even though it would greatly boost our productivity.
One thing that both janitors and IT have in common: The clean up and oftimes fix the shit that would COST you money.
Maybe IT isn't making the company a million bucks a year, but they are there (hopefully) configuring things so that you don't get infected with a virus that shares your customers' data with the world, or your data with the competition, or a million other things. Yeah, you make money that helps pay wages, but IT supports the infrastructure that allows you to make money.
This really seems to be a concept that many don't understand. Why do proper backups, security, etc. They cost money and don't make anything, right? WRONG, because they save you from potential f*ckups that might very well lead to - depending on the company - the whole damn business going down the shitter. Why the IT guys asks for a proper backup server or some other such thing it's not because he's lazy and wants to do things the easy way, it's because he's trying to protect YOUR (company's) best interests from a semi-catastrophic failure.
I can't speak for the janitors, but I'd imagine that if the locks on the doors were broken, everybody got E-coli from a germ-infested lunchroom or surfaces, and your clients came left the meeting because the toilet they used was overflowing with shit, I'd imagine THAT wouldn't be too good for business either. Yeah, it's a job that doesn't require a degree from MIT, but that doesn't make it any less necessary or important.
So to the grandparent who thinks the world revolves around himself can further his self-gratification a bit more. In other words, go F*** yourself.
My last job was an IT company trying to be a business. They hired me, then realised that they had no title for me, and that they didn't need me, so they sacked me. Everyone in the company, except the management, are on minimum wages. Now I work for my family's business as an office clerk and earn AUD$10k more.
I didn't say they aren't necessary.
But there's a difference between the guy who brings you coffee and the guy who compiles last quarter's numbers for you. One of the differences is what TFA touched upon: You can outsource and quickly switch the external company for the janitor service. Anyone who's outsourced IT knows that more often than not, the effort involved in the outsourcing dwarves the actual IT effort for that period (and sometimes, several others).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'd actually go in the other direction. Perhaps to actually argue a case before a court there should be certification, but it's ridiculous that it's illegal to provide legal advice just because you haven't been admitted to some anticompetitive guild, even without anyone being able to prove that your advice was in any way incompetent or negligent. If I'm a self-made expert on some area of the law, why can't I give people advice on it, so long as I don't misrepresent myself as having a JD?
I think the reason CS hasn't gone that way is because of how ridiculously oppressive a government that tried to enforce it would be perceived as. The neighbor kid fixing your computers for $10 would be committing a crime, unlicensed repair work on a computer.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I like the idea of IT as a fiefdom.
Squire!
Yes My Lord?
Call the Wizards of IT, and tell them we want louder keyboards.
At once my liege! The Wizards will want a description the problem with the current keyboards...
Of course. Tell them I can not hear the serfs toiling in their cubicles!
Man, is it too early to start drinking?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
yeah... the day the rest of society operates in total freedom.... we can talk.
I don't see that happening. I see the opposite happening. More protections, regulations... So we better dance to the tune of society... or we will continue to be trampled.
For specific, product-related information, please go to http://www.microsoft.com/ ;-)
Throughout my IT career, most of which has been as a professional consultant, I view everyone from the organization to the end-user as a client. This allows me to maintain the proper focus, a client-centric focus, when addressing problems and requests. Even when working as an employee over the years I maintained the same client-centric focus. To classify IT as a business or to set up IT as a business is non-sense because IT, done correctly, reduces costs of activities associated with the core function of the business. IT is a service not a business unless your business is IT.
I'm an embedded software engineer, and I don't work in IT. In my company, all of us software developers have our own department, but our computers are owned and serviced by the IT department. The products our company makes have embedded CPUs and lots of software; IT is there to provide us with the tools to do our jobs.
There are two kinds of companies in regards to this question of what IT should be, one kind is the kind you work for. A company that makes some kind of computer based tech product or service. The other kind is a company that doesn't make computer based tech product or service. I've worked for both kinds of companies and believe me when I say that each kind of company has their own special needs for IT type services(and not all of them do it right). There are also special types of companies like mega conglomerates and companies that do their business primarily through the internet but are actually in a different industry (like Amazon, E-trade, etc.). I have no idea how IT works or should work in places like that. Its probably fairly strange.
I don't really consider what you are doing to be IT, its product engineering and the person you are supporting is the customer, not coworkers. I've met only a couple of embedded software engineers in my life, but they seemed pretty competent. But I think even management would agree that you fall into the engineering department and the places these people I knew worked had them placed there. But being in a special department like engineering shouldn't really entitle you to any more special privileges in regards to computer access. Because its not about how smart you are, its about controlling access to network resources and so on. Some IT managers also place emphasis on being consistent across the network for easier management with less staff. Maybe some places this is necessary. At this point in time, I kinda don't blame them for wanting to be a little slow because everyone always wants the latest stuff and if they fill one request then they have to fill a thousand.
I don't know if you've ever worked in the IT department as helpdesk or sys/network admin or programmer, but if you did, I think you'd see the difference. In a big company especially.
Which is why monetising IT is wrong (excepting companies that sell IT services). IT is not there to be a revenue stream but to ensure that other revenue streams are working. In this way IT is more akin to insurance, it's kept only in case the worst happens. Of course there are other business benefits to a good IT dept such as upgrades and other efficiency increases that you don't get from insurance. Accounting\PHB does not complain about the cost of insurance because they will rely on it when things go pear shaped, this is exactly the same scenario with IT and technology going pear shaped.
What perplexes me is that if the PHB insists on monetising IT and charging for every moment of downtime, why cant the IT dept charge other departments for every moment of uptime? Why are charges one way only?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm not asking for special access privileges, I'm asking for the right tools to do my job in the timeframe management wants me to do it. A computer is no different from an oscilloscope or a multimeter or a screwdriver; they're all tools to do my job. But while the company has no problem providing oscilloscopes, expensive eval boards and custom development hardware, etc., it refuses to provide a decent computer. A computer that takes 24 hours to build a filesystem (I'm not exaggerating) is wasting a LOT of money, in the form of engineering time, compared to a computer that takes 2 hours to do the same thing, but this is what they give us because the IT department is responsible for providing computers.
I don't really see how this type of company is any different from, say, a software development company like Microsoft or Quicken. I'm sure MS doesn't provide 8-year-old computers to their employees to develop software with, because it's an outrageous waste of time for highly-paid engineers to sit around waiting for software to recompile. Actually, they probably have a more centralized build server (with a lot more power than any desktop computer, and shared by employees) to do this kind of thing, like I used to have in a prior job; I've suggested that too, and it was ignored.
What's really strange is that the mechanical engineering group (they design the product plastics) next door has all the latest Dell Alienware XPS stuff, dual monitors, etc. So it's not a case of "everyone wants the latest stuff" as you say, because that group gets all the latest stuff, and we don't.
"You are aware that a lot of IT jobs cite "B.S. in Computer Science or equiv." as a requirement, right?" - by Culture20 (968837) on Tuesday January 19, @05:50PM (#30825912)
Not really what I've seen: Typically, you see things like A+, MCSE, etc. et al (of that nature/ilk, such as CISCO certs & more) for STRAIGHT "IT" jobs (meaning network tech or admin type)...
HOWEVER, & IN YOUR DEFENSE? Perhaps an "H.R." person wrote the ones you've seen? Not sure, but, it sounds it.
The CSC degree track is more oriented to Computer Programmers/Programmer-Analyst/Software Engineering jobs.
(At most, as far as "classical education" in terms of collegiate academia, for IT? Well, you see CIS degree requirements or Computer Engineering ones, as far as network technician/administrator/engineer jobs).
CIS vs. CSC, for instance? The latter is a MUCH MORE DIFFICULT DEGREE TRACK, by far (I have both (CIS was a concentration of my 2 degrees around this field)), & it is why I can state this much, yes, from experience in coursework, lots of it, in both (ontop of my actually having worked this field as a pro for a decent stretch (16 yrs. & then some)).
There is a REASON why "classical degrees" for instance, take a LOT LONGER TO EARN than certs: There is FAR MORE TO LEARN is why.
Then, comes the experience part...
Which imo as someone that's been in this "field/art & science" of computing professionally (as well as having been multiply internationally published on my part for a few nice things I've done over time in COMMERCIAL CODE in "enterprise class" level apps that went on to Microsoft Tech-Ed 2000 thru 2002 as a finalist in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement)?
EXPERIENCE IN THE "TRENCHES"/"HANDS-ON" matters even more in many a way!
(So, I can comment, & on both grounds noted here (programmer-analyst/software engineer AND network administrator) professionally, for 16++ yrs. now (& that of anyone IN this field, actually counts for as much (if not more)).
----
"Sit a *nix sysadmin down in front of a terminal and tell him he needs to fix a bug in some C code, and he'll happily whip out vi, gdb, and gcc. Sit a Windows admin down in front of a Windows machine and tell him he needs to fix a bug in some C code, and he'll fire up Visual Studio (or mingw). They may not get it done as quickly or cleanly as a regular developer, but they're light years ahead of your average janitor." - by Culture20 (968837) on Tuesday January 19, @05:50PM (#30825912)
Well... that depends: But, overall? True that... I have to agree on THAT account, by all means!
(Calling anyone into computing on a technical level a "janitor" is truly over-exaggerating things).
HOWEVER: I also think it is in ANYONE WHO IS IN THIS FIELDS' truly 'best interests', be they coders OR network techs/admins, to learn AS MUCH AS THEY CAN ON BOTH GROUNDS (coding, and networking), period.
Why? Well, common-sense really: It just makes you that much more marketable, and that much more skilled & being able to function as both!
(Thing is, most coders who have been around this field usually can though, & pretty well on BOTH fronts, because you have to be able to work the network to get a LOT of what you have to do, done, period, & that usually means being assigned FULL NETWORK ADMIN rights to a lot of things, if not all - and many coders have their own networks @ home, & you really SHOULD... @ least to do "Client-Server" type app development!)
It's pretty simple really.
I'll give you an another example: I am SURE that as a network tech/admin, you have heard of & referred to the IANA ports list, right? HOWEVER - have you ever programmed an application that works on actual sockets, either via WinSock/WinSock2 or *NIX sockets work??
(Therein lies the "BIG difference", usually!)
----
"Now reverse the roles. Sure,
This article isn't going to enlighten you or give you the secret to running a top notch IT organization. And neither are most of the comments that have risen to the top. There is no magic wand. Anyone that tells you otherwise is probably selling something. There's just hard work and a commitment to excellence with the acceptance that there are certain things which are inevitable:
1) You're in business to produce a profit. You're not in business to procure, deploy, or worship technology. Technology is a tool. No different than a screwdriver or a machine press or a clock. It helps the workers be more productive and capable of producing a profit. Nothing more. Nothing less. Used well, technology is power. Used unwisely, it's an anvil around your neck.
2) Organizations are groups of people. People in groups don't communicate well. People one on one usually communicate very well. Whenever you get a large enough group, there will be miscommunication and that thwarts most "techniques" or "methodologies" engineered to negate this effect. The sooner you realize that you can't engineer away humanity, the sooner you'll be successful in using one on one relationships to get most of your wins. ALL organizations will NEVER be in sync at any given time.
3) No matter where you work, there will be a bell curve of capability and skill. You'll have a few rock stars, most people will be in the middle, and there will be a few truly aweful people. It doesn't matter if it's Google or the Army or AJ's Nails and Hair. No organization can attract the best and brightest all the time for all needs. So even if you have good processes and good relationships, they won't always work and you won't always get good results. The best you can do is work hard to provide the best you can and accept the fact that not everyone you are working with is capable or motivated to do the same. Stop complaining and do what is reasonable to solve the problem. That will bring you the most success. And happiness. Read this again, and then lower where you think YOU are in the bell curve.
4) People are relying on you to guide them and help them to make informed and intelligent decisions. To them, what you do is scary and expensive and magical all at the same time. Keep the previous 3 points in mind on how they will present their problem to you and respond to the solution that you present to them.
I've been a CIO for everything from startups to publicly traded companies to companies I've founded. The principals don't change. Just the budgets and egos.
Not every shop. In most places that are dedicated to developing software each team is it's own department. This is good from a management perceptive (when dev's make up the 30% of your employee's it makes sense) but tends to enable a narcissistic developers egotism. An IT department (servers and networking) is necessary to tie these teams together as well as the rest of the business.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The same applies to Accounting, Reception, lawers and most of management. I dare you to go into your bosses office and tell him how much more important you are then he is because he doesn't directly generate a revenue stream. Same with the Accountant, you'll be laughed out of the building. But then again, who is depending on who here, by your own admission "are necessary for the people who do".
And you understand as much about business as the average homeless person, the same cant be said about Infrastructure as some hobo's would understand quite a bit more then you.
.exe files via exchange because it's easier then the FTP site we set up.
This is the point about developers being Prima Donna's. Some developers can manage their own machines, a few could even manage a whole team's network but get beyond 5 clients and maybe one server and almost all developers are completely lost. Almost all developers have no idea about information security and integrity, server and network systems (most have trouble with simple network troubleshooting, lets not get into routing issues) and tend to rely on this "I make money and you don't" type of egotism to ignore learning other peoples job.
In my last job, I let developers do their own thing on their own machines but their authority ends at the cable. But I still get asked incredibly stupid questions like:
Open ports 1024 to 60,000 on the firewall to all IP addresses.
Allow me to send
And after being given a reality check they were still indignant enough to demand their own communications infrastructure. I had to drag one dev in front of the CIO before this stopped.
Applogies to the approximately 60% of dev's who aren't a pain in the arse and have a connection to reality, this rant about for you.
Overselves, like an overlord? Perhaps you should have learned English before ranting.
STOP making my job more difficult by creating security risks and throwing up roadblocks in front of what I need to do for the sake of your petty ego. You're not the only person in your organisation, the infrastructure is here for all of them not just you.
MY job enables you to do YOUR job, never forget who needs who or who is easier to replace/outsource.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Treating it like a business is a VERY bad idea. Most businesses depend on their IT/IS Infrastructure to operate and some utilize their infrastructure to operate efficiently. In both cases the IT department is who engineer's or maintains this infrastructure that every company depends on. When your business needs to grow your infrastructure will be the first thing that needs to be modified to facilitate that growth. Having an experienced and integrated IT department is the best way to ensure a successful and painless transition. That integration comes from not separating IT as a separate business but integrating the IT staff so that they have a full understanding of operations and can better serve the company. Specifically when it comes to new technologies and how they can benefit the company by increasing profit margin, efficiency, reliability or reduce downtime. Or how to manage the flow of data from customers to maximize revenue and reduce the length of sales cycles. As far as cutting IT costs the best thing to do is to take purchasing out of the loop so that efforts on concentrated on making things WORK instead of replacing what ever is broken with a purchase of something similarly or differently flawed. Ever since out company switched over to buying from PriceHonest.com we have saved over 20% of our normal budget for IT and now our IT people can concentrate on internal software solutions and quality engineering of IT solutions for our Internal customers. Our IT staff writes up a RFQ on PriceHonest.com we get cheap tax free bids from CDW Dell Ingram Micro the same people our purchasing agents usually call anyways to negotiate prices and rates and we purchase everything we were getting from the same vendors except we are getting it a LOT cheaper and tax free. That gives us room in our IT budget for other expenses to make our jobs easier or to add to our rainy day fund or to have enough left over to get a bump at bonus time.
I suppose both the costing and idea that things will be better were extracted from an orifice which is where the tablets are emerging from. You can only smile and nod and wait for the crazy man to go away.
I really wonder how those people can think solution A is going to be cheaper than solution B when they do not have any idea what is involved in either and what those things cost.
I sent the link to this article around this morning because I believe its exactly whats wrong with our IT dept. We bill departments every year for our work. I think in our case, the solution would be to fund IT off the top of the city's budget and then we would not have to bill the departments. We could treat them as partners rather than customers.
and should be run out of the facilities department, just like plumbing or electrical.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
As a 3rd party vendor of technology solutions, I read this slightly differently, because we are, in effect, the "IT department" for much of our clientelle. What I read this as is that we should, as a company, be focusing more on the needs of our clients' clients, rather than our clients. Which leads us into a strange territory where we are telling our clients what to do.
This is a good take, and I agree with OP and PP that this pretty much hits the nail on the head. Obviously, within our company, we treat IT as a core part of the company, it IS the core part of our company! IT - it's what we sell! But to the extent that we act as the IT department for our clients, we should take advice here and look even further outward towards the clients' clients who ultimately do use our software services as well!
It's a Loooooooonnnnnnngggggg reach getting out that far.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
But if I support what you're proposing, it's me who'll get trampled, because I'm not going to get one of these MSCE-level crappy certifications from the government, so it'll just stand in the way of me being able to earn my living doing freelance work.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem is we employ people who can not critically think to solve a company's problem that affects all. When hiring people we do not measure the candidate both vertically and horizontally- depth of It plus understanding of all the users both employee and customers. People get promoted are C average morons but "A" butterification. Look at what is going now. We have exported our technology, manufacturing, IT development etc., and we are left with useless consumes who have no money to buy anything. People who use to BS around are now jobless and are burden to the USA. Finance and accounting guys who got a 'C' in IT now control the areas that they are not qualified to control. However, arrogant IT guys, who never learned that ROI and happiness enhancement is not just coding, rather skills that they need to develop. But is there any one who cares for US industries and business?
I've said this many times before: As an IT guy, it doesn't offend me if you think of IT guys as janitors. It bothers me more to think that you don't respect your janitors.
No, neither IT nor janitors directly bring in revenue. Generally management doesn't bring in revenue either. In a certain sense, developers don't even bring in revenue. The only people who bring in revenue are sales people, and everyone else costs money. But you can't have a business with all salesmen and no product, can you?
Try running your business without your janitors and see how much revenue you bring in. Bring a client into a meeting where trash is all over the ground and the entire office smelling like someone took a dump under the front desk. Keep your employees from quitting when the bathrooms haven't been cleaned in 5 years. It's true that janitors don't produce revenue, but only enable developers to do their jobs, but developers only enable salesmen to do their job by giving them a product to sell.
But then again, salesmen only enable developers to do their jobs by finding someone to buy the software the developers create. And they're all getting paid from income to the company that wouldn't exist if not for the janitors. Janitors get paid little enough in money; the least we can do is pay them a little in respect.
There's only one problem - companies are drunk with "cheap" IT, and aren't easily going to be dragged back to the true costs without a concept of how much money TRULY integrated IT can save them.
It's a long climb back from where they're at today and they haven't exactly been hiring "entrepreneurial"-minded individuals and personalities necessary to kick-start this... what's essentially an internal "start-up" that will have to integrate themselves back into the company like the Borg, while proving they can make the company more efficient and more profitable, isn't going to be easy at all.
+++OK ATH
As a software developer I greatly appreciate the small number of times I've actually seen the software used by the end user. As this can give insight into how the process is used, what further automation can be done and what simple GUI improvements can be made to make the process more efficient. If such information is filtered out by the usual user > manager > analyst > developer chain of command, it makes my job that much harder.
Personally I think developers should eat their own cooking more. Get them out into various parts of the business from time to time so they can see exactly what is being done. Then they will be in a better position to offer advice on how they can improve on it.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Having been in this game my entire life I've learned that Businessmen (women) make Business decisions. They are not qualified to make technical (IT) decisions, so, they make "business" decisions. The down side of this, is that they often (not always) hire the cheapest IT resources they can (because that's a good "business" decision). Unfortunately, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, so its a false economy. If you ask these decision makers if they would pick the cheapest brain surgeon, or cosmetic surgeon for their wife's fill-in-the-blanks surgery, they would first do some research, obtain opinions and only then make the decision. A cab driver cannot evaluate the technical acumen of a Boeing 747 pilot any more than a Businessman can evaluate the technical acumen of an IT professional - so they go by price alone. Since their hiring practices are based on price and what they think they know from the latest "computer fashion magazine" or "expert journalist", its not surprise that as often as not they get burned. They really have a disdain for the technical personnel. IT personnel haven't helped themselves either - many have thrown their weight around the company with conceit and arrogance, "confirming" the businessman's opinion. Unless the IT group is in charge of their own *P* and L, instead of just the L, it flat out can't function as a business. That means that IT is a profit center with control of its own destiny, or its not. It can't be half (usually the L half) of a profit center only, and provide any quality level of service.
There are several options for maturing / growing an IT department. Moving from a cost center to a critical component of the company.
Most of the models have 4-5 stages, with the least mature characterized the IT department being driven by external events such as user requests. They have unenforced IT policy, patches are applied manually and in an adhoc manner. IT is seen as a cost center with varying levels of values. Costs usually decrease as IT becomes more mature, and its perceived value becomes greater. The first two models are platform and technology independent. The third is very MS specific and provides a great technology roadmap.
The Sloan school of management has a very good book - I don't have the title since I lent it out and it never returned. The model is platform agnostic.
http://www.cioindex.com/nm/articlefiles/2779-IT%20Alignment%20Maturity%20Model.pdf
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/files/pdfs/45309SxW.pdf
Carnegie Mellon has a model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model
I don't have any experience with this.
Microsoft has a very MS centric model, with detailed implementation steps.
http://microsoftio.partnersalesresources.com/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/infrastructure/default.aspx
The MS and Sloan information make a very useful pair. Sloan offers great conceptual guidance, and the MS information provides very concrete implementation steps. Even if your IT department is not MS centric, the information can still be used; substitute Active Directory with LDAP, etc.
I work at an IT managed services company that caters to small and medium sized businesses. Basically they outsource their entire IT department/role to us. We provide a 24 hour helpdesk and onsite technical support/consulting services as required. Most of my clients pay us by the hour through prepaid hours packs for any contact time with us along with travel time and minimum callouts durations etc.
It never ceases to amaze me how money is the great equalizer in most of my situations. Let say that a customer wants me to do something that is inefficient and will take me a long time to do but might save them some time/effort. I just put a estimated time/dollar value on it and present that to both the person and their boss/decision maker. If there is a better solution that might cost more upfront but would be cheaper/better in support costs etc in the long run I present that along side. If that thing, even if it is inefficient or stupid, still gets approved as requested then my company makes money for my time in doing that thing as they were warned it would. Most of the time, though, as soon as they see the dollar value the whole idea gets dropped as it can't be justified in financial terms by the person signing the checks and that decision is enforced on the requester by their superior rather than some IT guy.
By the very nature of my job I am getting paid for my advice/assistance at a high hourly rate - everybody understands how much I cost and my advice and time tends to be more respected because of it. Knowing my stuff, staying on top of the latest technologies and trends, doing good work and doing right by the clients has also earned me their respect in most cases. Also, strangely, wearing a suit seems to help quite a bit too. As such, I've found a professional client/vendor relationship billed/paid by the hour works better than a coworker/coworker one for cutting through the crap - particularly when the co-worker asking the thing of IT believes themselves to be superior in the organisation yet isn't accountable for their time/pay etc. It also saves them money vs. having a full time IT guy in most cases (I know because in many cases we replaced one on that basis).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_chain
I'm sorry, but what exactly is he stating that isnt already in software development 101? You're suposed to work hand-in-hand with your customer as you develop software, how else can you even guarantee that you meet a modicum of their need? If they are not willing to spend the time with your developers as the solution progresses, then the customer really doesnt care about what they 'want' or you're working with the wrong person/people.
Seriously, he's just stating the obvious...
I love to slaughter the english language.
I beg to differ. Pizza, like software, should not come with bugs in it. I care how much it costs, and if it contains insect matter or rodent excrement...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
IT is chronically understaffed and overcommitted. Then we turn to overpriced outsourcers to try and fill the gap. The overhead cost of IT is eaten by the company, either as vague "indirect expense" or charged back to other departments using some kind of algorithm. Nobody likes either method, for a wide variety of reasons. I propose a new approach.
Instead of each business unit haggling about how they get overcharged for their share of IT, I suggest that IT offer "core services" that everybody needs and get charged back at an equitable rate per user. For everything else (software development or other specialized projects), the various departments bid against each other for the resources to do the job. For those initiatives with high ROI, nobody will mind spending some of their budget on IT. On the other hand, when the marketing director wants the umpteenth total redesign of the company website, she will have to outbid the process automation group that wants to reprogram the robots who make the widgets. The message to internal customers is clear: buy only what you can justify. The message to internal IT is equally clear: use supply and demand to drive your priority list.
Theoretically, internal IT should be able to undercut outsourcers almost every time (but only if they are competent). There may be occasions where outsourcing is unavoidable, in which case their finished product has to be handed over to the internal production group anyway. Let internal IT hire people within the limits of their revenue, use outsourcers for temporary "surge" capability, and drop any project that can't be delivered within the bids from their sponsors.
Using this approach, some of the profit from IT activities will end up in the IT department. That means revenue and profitability goals for IT, much the same as the company's operational departments. To me, the only real drawback is the requirement for honest budgeting. All of the non-IT departments would have to include non-trivial amounts of budget money allocated to IT services and projects. Current industry practices enable a number of management fantasies to be fulfilled. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people long enough to finish the fiscal year. Current practices are far from ideal.
Similar to theories of health care reform, the key is to make sure customers spend some of their own money, without losing economies of scale or encouraging counterproductive behavior.
English doesn't offer much in the way of gender-neutral pronouns. For a long time, it was standard practice to use a "universal 'he'", as the author of TFA did. Or, one could use a "singular they" or alternate between "he" and "she".
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I always thought that phase was stupid. I work in Government, and in IT, and it is a phrase I would hear a lot. We should run like a business, like that was some kind of god damn holy grail or something. I would bet most of the vaunted higher ups that would spout this nonsense never worked a day in the private sector, and likely picked up the phrase at some exorbitantly expensive training conference put on by a private consultant company just ripping off the government like all the rest.
It is complete and utter BS for one, and secondly, as I used to say, there is a significant difference between government and private business which would require them to be run differently! Mostly the fact that you are funded by public money, are accountable to the general population, have political masters, and must maintain a degree of service far above and beyond that of the private sector, particularly in areas that would be totally unprofitable to any private business enterprise, yet is essential part of our system of governance.
I understand for the most part this is trying to instill efficiency, and lower costs, but it A) doesn't work, and B) doesn't make any sense.
My response these days, is look at the previous "leaders" of business, AIG, GM, etc... and all the rest, they certainly were run like a "business" and that turned out well. Who will bail out government, should the same thing happen? Its citizens, if they can, or nobody if they can't, and you don't want to even consider if they can't.
I'm seeing a business opportunity.
I will sell you an "oscilloscope" ( wink wink ). :-)
All the "oscilloscopes" you and your team needs.
emt 377 emt 4