What's Wrong with IT?

[JMaguire]

Longtime IT consultant Steve Andriole writes a very candid article about the problems in the IT industry:

In short, it's management, staffers and vendors. Everyone needs a wake-up call:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/fea...g+with+IT?.htm

What's your opinion?

[Phil_Conrad]

WOW.., where do I start... ?

First off.., Corp. Management does not have to "go back to school" to learn technology. This statement is ludicrous. Business managers are hired for their expertise, finance, marketing, what have you.. And to imply that the problem within an IT structure is due to others not understanding things on a technical level is a cop-out. Having said this, I agree that those rare but few managers that do have an understanding of IT make better managers.., but the vast majority of Corporate heads are not of this bread and at the end of the day we need to work with what we have.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that corporations operate based on processes..., otherwise there would be chaos. Each manager is the expert in their own process and need good communication skills to be able to work with other departments to solve problems in the process flow. This includes IT.

But.., since we live in a digital world a lot of the processes require IT to build networks, software tools and applications to streamline these processes.., and from my experience this is where the problem is.

Let me explain.., companies are in business to sell stuff.., plain and simple. And in order to sell they have to move a lot of information.., pre-sales, post sales, accounting, customer support, etc.. And IT has their hands in all of this activity. But what IT doesn't seem to get is, they are there to support the selling process rather then try and control the process.

I can point to hundreds of examples where I've been in meetings with various departments and the beloved "IT guys" and without fail, after explaining what is needed, we get push back from IT. What the standard mantra seems to always be is "you guys can't have this" but if we push and ask why we get "because you don't understand, it's technical, it's not secure, it's a bad idea." Blah blah blah..

OK, so if it's technically a challenge for you.., extend the deliverable timeline. If it's not secure.., suggest a way to make it secure. If it's a bad idea.., tell me why and from what business experience you base this assumption on (that one always stops IT cold in their tracks). The bottom line again is.., we have to sell stuff and IT has to help, not get in the way.

To be fair I love IT people. I couldn't do my job without them and I'll never be able to learn all the technical stuff they deal with. So it's really a forced love-hate relationship. Most of the disconnect I feel is due to the techies being poor communicators. Hey.., maybe we should have IT go back to school to learn how to communicate better. Nahh.., I think they should just except that they are here to support the selling process and not control it.

Thanks for listening.

Phil.
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InfoStreet.com

Edit by admin: no contact info permitted on the forum, thank you

[JPnyc]

well you have to admit it does pose a something of a problem if you have managers and administrators making decisions when they don't understand as much about a given topic as the people making the recommendations to them. Even if you would say something like "you hire somebody who's the best in their field and then trust what they tell you", how do you know who to trust if you don't know the answer yourself?

[Phil_Conrad]

I guess that's a fair statement.., but I feel a gross generalization. Some manager have a lot of technical expertise, some just a little, and some with none. The ones with little to no technical knowledge do not need to "learn IT" to know that if a technical tool, widget or network isn't built sales will suffer. Make a business case for the tool, scope it.., and let the techies do their job. And if I have to know their business to ensure a project will get done correctly.., I've hired the wrong people. Besides.., scoping and deliverables solves the trust problem.

The only exception with my position is if a company is selling technology.

All good dialog, thanks for the feedback.

Phil.
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[JPnyc]

Yes, they definitely do that. They definitely understand the need from a business perspective for a given widget, but what I find they don't understand is why it needs to be built a certain way in order to function properly. What I find is that they are very often ready to settle for a bare-bones solution that takes less time and manpower, as long as it meets the basic needs, even if it doesn't meet them as well as could be with more time spent.

[ua549]

That is the age old dilemma. Do something the right way or the (short term) cheapest way.
Now days the emphasis is on the cheapest way no matter what the long term cost might be.
Lowest bidder contracts come immediately to mind.

[JPnyc]

yes, and that problem is in no way limited to the IT field. You can apply it to pretty much anything in our society. But as you implied, it actually ends up costing more in the long run if you don't build something with an eye toward the future as well as toward present-day efficiency. The Internet and the IT field in general is an incredibly fast changing landscape. That's one of the reasons it's so difficult to get into. In the time it takes to learn a technology, that technology could easily be obsolete.

When I was in IT school, we were learning Java servlets. By the time I graduated they were abandoned for JSP. Fortunately it's not such a huge deviation that you would not be able to adapt, but still, it's not precisely what you were learning.