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I quit my job today, oh boy

tales-of-an-it-director.blogspot.com

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Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#11

Post by okeumeni »

Over the years I found that the fundamental problem between IT and Business people is trust.

IT folks (me included) consider themselves too smart for the MBA guys, as they call them, incapable of understanding the basics principles. IT folks rarely bother to speak frankly in company meetings because they thinks other folks will never get it; they push everyone else to consider then as a black box with ability to solve business life saving problems.

The reality is the MBA guys runs the business and are force to interact with the inhuman black box like they will do with a vending machine: You place an order, get results and move on.

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#12

Post by OneSeventeen »

run4yourlives wrote: post #4
akraut wrote: post #2

This article really hit the nail on the head about what's wrong with large corporate IT. Unless your business is IT, the upper management just don't understand it, therefore it's just part of doing business.

What exactly should IT be to a non-IT business? Why should it get any better treatment than Finance or HR?

I think the assertion was not that they should get better treatment, but that they should get equal treatment. I may have misinterpreted, of course.

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#13

Post by ajross »

edw519 wrote: post #7
ajross wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily as it should be. Many modern business models really are, at their core, automation problems. Think of the heavily automated factory, or brokerage. These firms clearly need "domain expertise" in what they do, but the minute-to-minute operation of the business is done not by the experts, but by the automation systems. In such a circumstance, it might make sense for the "IT" department to actually run th…

Amazon's excellent technology is the result of IT serving its business requirements, not the cause of it. Although they started out selling books, they had a grander vision. Sometimes I wonder if AWS was really planned or if it's just a byproduct of IT doing its job so well. This wouldn't be the first time a non-tech firm has become a tech firm once it realized that its most valuable asset was the techology it develo…

I guess there's sort of a chicken and egg thing here, so your point isn't really falsifiable. But again, the way Amazon is structured is as a software company. They build a product, and then hand that off to the operations side to implement. The big movers and decision makers in the company are on the product development side, and not on the implementation side.

That structure is the reverse of the typical corporate IT structure, where the people developing the product are routinely taking orders from the people who need to use those products.

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#14

Post by softwarejim »

edw519 wrote: post #3

The majority of changes in CA IT are driven by the business. Exactly! As it should be. (As it better be.) The challenge for IT is to prove what they want is in the best interest of the business , not the IT department. We know that, we just have trouble communicating it. Why should the business care about getting new servers or having developers waste their time rewriting already functioning code? It's your job to an…

agreed

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#15

Post by allenbrunson »

Tamerlin wrote: post #9
edw519 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's excellent technology is the result of IT serving its business requirements, not the cause of it. Although they started out selling books, they had a grander vision. Sometimes I wonder if AWS was really planned or if it's just a byproduct of IT doing its job so well. This wouldn't be the first time a non-tech firm has become a tech firm once it realized that its most valuable asset was the techology it develo…

http://coderific.com/employers/7

Interesting. I've never read so many negative things about Amazon in one place before.

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#16

Post by cscott »

There's an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review that breaks down the relationship between IT and the business depending on two factors: the reliability of IT and the need for IT innovation in the line of business.

The result is that you can lump the relationship of IT and the business into 4 categories:

Defensive: Factory Mode (High Reliability Need, Low Innovation Need) Defensive: Support Mode (Low Reliability Need, Low Innovation Need) Offensive: Strategic Mode (High Reliability Need, High Innovation Need) Offensive: Turnaround Mode (Low Reliability Need, High Innovation Need)

If the blog poster worked for a company in the defensive mode categories, his approach would definitely not be welcome in most cases, unless he had a major reliability argument.

Hopefully, he found a position in a company aligned with the Offensive side of the quadrants.

The article I mentioned is Nolan & McFarlen, "Information Technology and the Board of Directors", Harvard Business Review, Oct 2005.

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#17

Post by run4yourlives »

OneSeventeen wrote: post #12
run4yourlives wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly should IT be to a non-IT business? Why should it get any better treatment than Finance or HR?

I think the assertion was not that they should get better treatment, but that they should get equal treatment. I may have misinterpreted, of course.

I was replying though to the poster, not so much the article, specifically as he stated that they are "just a part of the business".

I'm not sure what else they should be, exactly.

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#18

Post by rickd »

edw519 wrote: post #3

The majority of changes in CA IT are driven by the business. Exactly! As it should be. (As it better be.) The challenge for IT is to prove what they want is in the best interest of the business , not the IT department. We know that, we just have trouble communicating it. Why should the business care about getting new servers or having developers waste their time rewriting already functioning code? It's your job to an…

I have to disagree with you somewhat here. Until businesses stop seeing IT departments only as "cost centers" you'll be able to try to "convince" them of what's in their interest until you're blue in the face. And I don't believe it's only IT's job to convince the business what is needed. Many businesses need to take a more active role in analyzing and understanding what IT departments do for them- they're the ones footing the bill, after all. You wouldn't make a new investment or buy a new (insert item her) without first UNDERSTANDING what you're getting, would you?

Furthermore, my company views all IT department spending as a cost and only a cost. But think about this: in the last several years, we developed a sophisticated (insurance) Simulated Rating Engine that actually performs rating of policies for underwriters. This rating information directly makes our company money- either by raising the amount of premium we charge, or lowering the exposure for claims against the company. But I can guarantee you won't get the company to consider this IT "making" them money. They paid a fixed cost for some magical technology black box. Now, the results of USING the black box are counted toward the underwriters, not IT.

This is just one concrete example of why I believe CA attitudes about IT contributions to the business need to change. Without that type of shift, IT will always be just another cost on the balance sheet- only able to take orders from the business (even if we are actively changing things and/or doing what's in the company's interest).

Re: I quit my job today, oh boy

#20

Post by gaius »

run4yourlives wrote: post #4
akraut wrote: post #2

This article really hit the nail on the head about what's wrong with large corporate IT. Unless your business is IT, the upper management just don't understand it, therefore it's just part of doing business.

What exactly should IT be to a non-IT business? Why should it get any better treatment than Finance or HR?

Well, it depends. It's not a competitive advantage for instance if your payroll goes through on time every month, it's just what's expected. It is a competitive advantage if you have say better employee retention than your rivals.

Similarly, it's not a competitive advantage if your printers are always full of paper and toner. It is a competitive advantage if you can automate things that previously required manual operation.

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