Today numerous IT departments worldwide face the this problem….. Where to focus the resources.
After the world economic crisis, companies rapidly focused on cutting costs, and at the end it falls on IT.
For the infrastructure side of IT it’s “easy”:
Lower your energy bill, A/C costs, communication costs, maintenance costs….. All this is done via virtualization, VoIP and talking to your vendors.
But how do you optimize the company's processes? That is what is killing IT today.
If you look around your office you will find that “Mike” as a super worksheet that does “everything”. It takes Mike 2 days to gather all the information he needs and then takes him about 2 hours to crunch the numbers. The worst part is that you have no clue about this super worksheet (by the way, it’s not on your backup plan) and his manager also has no clue.
So how you help the business be more efficient with your limited IT resources?
Well, after going through the same process that cost me some very ugly consequences….. I think I have the solution (open for debate)
1- Communicate: Create an IT steering committee whose members are other managers or key players in the organization. The idea is that in the committee all IT projects are talked about. This will help you show to your organization what is IT doing all day long.
2- Strong Foundation: In order for IT to prevail, it must have a strong foundation, and that means your infrastructure must be stable. If you want to help the business processes as a manager you can’t be worrying about massive PC failing, out of date Antivirus, bad backup plan, etc. that has to been taken care of before you can help the business. Why? What good will it do if you create this nice intranet but your old servers can’t take the load, or the new application you created runs slow as a turtle because half of your network is still at 100Mbit.
3- Be realistic: It’s nice to say yes to everyone…. But sometimes you just cant. Not all things are doable with your resources. When you commit to a deadline, always consider Murphy and your actual work load, and remember the more applications or systems you deliver the more support you need to give, so now your developers are also doing helpdesk support.
4- Be a socialite: The more you mingle with the other managers the more you can explain your day to day problems and that way they will understand you better.
5- Lobby: If you need something make others help you get it. Let’s say you need a new developer but company policies say no more new hires. Get the help of the other managers. If they all talk to upper management on how they feel if IT had just one more developer things would be easier…. You may find it easier to get that new developer.
6- Communicate: Yes its rule #1 and it so important you have to do it all the time. In meetings, at lunch with other managers, at the company BBQ, etc. Never stop communicating.
This is my view of this dilemma…. I am open to debate…..
George.
My view from the Captain's Chair. 16 years in IT gives me a bit of view how things are in IT. So here we go!
Ah, Mike and his super spreadsheets. Shame on him. Nice list, George!
ReplyDeleteMica
Congratulations George. Very interesting Blog. You talked about an interesting point, it seems like IT never knows what the users do with data, like the SuperMegaWorkSheet you talked about. So i think "the point" is that IT must knows the business needs, in order to facilitate the real work of the enterprise.
ReplyDeleteAn enterprise doesn''t install mail ... Ver más server to "send mail", they install mail server to "do business" with e-mail, and is the same for every product the enterprise install.
IT Must Be Aware of the real Business Needs. And yes, IT Must communicate what they does. (communicate, lobby, something we talked about with Benjamin last year) it's hard to believe, but many times, the most important part of a project is "how to communicate" the real benefits that a project has, and why IT is implementing those things and in that particular way.
I agree with you, and again, have a Big Congratulation a have a nice "blog trek"... "to boldly go where no IT has gone before :-)"
Be realistic: From my point of view... this is the KEY!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks to all!
ReplyDeleteMica... don’t laugh, "Mike" is alive in every company and when his PC's HD dies...then IT will be hit with a request from upper management to backup everybody’s HD!.
Oscar, you are right and I total agree with you…. IT must communicate or will be in deep trouble. Every day there is more need for IT, but not printers, PCs faster networks… but what is needed is IT to help the business. But for that… IT needs a bit of the commercial side……
Eduardo, you too are right… but it is also hard to be realistic… unless you tamper the deadlines and add a NICE buffer and then tweak as you get closer to the deadline. By the way… there will be a post soon regarding CPUs! I will “steal” some of your comments from your presentations.