Slashdot Log In
The Disconnect Between Management and the Value of IT
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Mar 11, 2008 08:08 AM
from the grab-some-better-educated-managers dept.
from the grab-some-better-educated-managers dept.
DavidHumus writes "According to a Wall St. Journal article top executives at most companies fail to recognize the value of IT, having a tendency to think of information technology as a basic utility, like plumbing or telephone service. The article lists five primary reasons for 'the wall' between IT and business: 'mind-set differences between management staff and IT staff, language differences, social influences, flaws in IT governance (defined as the specification and control of IT decision rights), and the difficulty of managing rapidly changing technology.' Does this fully explain the extreme lack of understanding of IT at high executive levels? The article is even-handed in apportioning blame but touches on a few good points. In particular, how '[m]ost top executives ... think of IT as an expensive headache that they'd rather not deal with.'"
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
utilities are important (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this comment shows a failure to recognize the value of basic utilities.
Amen! (Score:4, Insightful)
Basic utilities are immensely valuable. Imagine how much less productive your office would be if it didn't have phones, electricity, or indoor plumbing.
The fact that these items cost only a fraction of their contribution doesn't mean the same is true for IT.
The key difference is that most basic utilities are or have historically been regulated and their price set at the cost of production plus a reasonable profit. Where they are not regulated they are theoretically kept reasonable by market pressures or political pressures.
Employment of knowledge-workers on the other hand is different:
Each job is unique. Each worker is unique. Leaving one employer for another you hope will be better takes time and effort, as does "getting rid of" a less productive worker and replacing him with someone you hope will be more productive. For these reasons, if someone's pay, benefits, and working conditions are "close enough" to what both the employer and employee think are fair, the employee probably won't quit and he probably won't be "gotten rid of."
Parent
Phones make people productive? O RLY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Phones make people productive? O RLY? (Score:4, Interesting)
Layne
Parent
Re:utilities are important (Score:4, Insightful)
* Yes, there might exist businesses that might benefit significantly from hotter hot water. Please spare me your nerdly nitpicking.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, TFA's whole point is that IT shouldn't be treated as a utility!
Re:utilities are important (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. If you try to "right size" your plumbing infrastructure, you will have to redo it every few years and it will cost you much more in the long run.
Re:utilities are important (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:utilities are important (Score:5, Insightful)
I know of several companies who are going to replace thousands of pounds of functioning servers simply because they've reached the end of their 3year service life. When we stop measuring server lifespans in months and do so instead in decades, we'll have matured as an industry. And then people will understand computers as they understand electricity, telephones and plumbing.
They'll still call a specialist.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In any business larger than a small shop there are usually several toilets for capacity and redundancy. One can be down for a long time without an adverse effect, provided that it's properly sealed
Maintaining the pretence of superiority (Score:5, Insightful)
They missed something off the list. One of the biggest, if not the biggest barriers I see is the desperate attempts of managers to pretend they know more than their staff. This is never more apparent than in computers and the painful experiences I have had with managers who have to try and justify a higher salary whilst doing something which, at the end of the day, is less critical to the production of a product or service than the people who are actually developing it, have left me with nothing but pity for those managers. It's a terrible burden to have to try and instruct someone who knows a lot more about how to accomplish something than you do, and it tends to result in interference or denigration. Only a few non-technical managers I have had have had the confidence or humility to just ask me what the best thing they should decide is. And they were the best managers.
Re:Maintaining the pretence of superiority (Score:5, Insightful)
Manager: "Hmm....well, on this decision, I guess I'll have to delegate to you. Now, honestly, what do you think we should do??"
Dev: "Scrap the java codebase and start over from scratch in Ruby on Rails"
Manager: "Hmm...didn't we work on this for 10 years and have millions of lines of code invested, including stuff that we can't readily replace because we're still trying to replace that last senior dev?"
Dev: "Scrap the codebase and start over"
Manager: "Well...ok!"
That wouldn't go too well
Parent
Re:Maintaining the pretence of superiority (Score:5, Interesting)
Me: "I have fleshed out our draft spec for the new Web site through a series of phone calls and emails over the last few weeks and the developers say they will be able to meet perhaps 80-90% of what you want by the tight deadline you have set and then they will roll out the remaining features over the next couple of weeks."
Director: "I am really concerned that the developers are so far away in another country"
Me: "Distance is not really a problem these days - and in any case, I have sounded out several of their customers and UK contacts and they have all recommended this team. Overall, they can do the job for a very good fee + offer the after-sales support."
Director: "I will think about it"
Email from Director 3 days later at 8pm one night:
"I have spoken to a friend and he has recommended a local company he knows so I have given them the contract."
So, for 3x the cost and over 8 months late we got a half-assed, closed-sourse site with bits still missing.
Boy do I feel valued round here. Thinking of moving? Funny you should say that...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's not what you know, its who you blow."
Back in the late 90s, I got a nice generic RFP for a website for a local business development group, and spent two solid weeks developing a detailed website development plan, including creating an ad revenue stream and offered it up for free to them. I wanted the contacts from the other businesses and figured that I would get some of those businesses. My bid was the only qualifying bid response to the RFP
Re:Maintaining the pretence of superiority (Score:4, Funny)
It's how much you can swallow.
Parent
Re:Maintaining the pretence of superiority (Score:4, Insightful)
Operation Management Systems (OMS)
and
Business Intelligence or Decision Support Systems. (BI/DSS)
OMS are the mission critical systems which need to run perfectly on time and efficiently. These are the programs that keep the business running smoothly.
BI/DSS are jobs that try to take and represent data so it can be understood clearly without information overload. These systems run with margins of errors based a lot of statistics can be down for a few days or months without effecting daily operations. But their value is giving management and the decision makers information to make good decisions for the future. A silly app that seems to say track marketing calls how much time they take on each call to who. Then could be put into a Data Warehouse linked with the HR systems and Sales and find that some marketing people spend to much time with small customers and less with big customers who can greatly effect their profit and save on marketing costs.
iT departments often have a hard time with BI/DSS because they are loose nebulous systems, that are continually changing and evolving, often run very slowly because they are using loosely tied togeter data, often in bad formats... But they do have a value, many times these values are the difference of surviving and dieing as a company.
So I would take a step back if I were you and try to see what the value of the request. It may not be someone just trying to show that they are HIP with IT, but actually working for getting real value out of their IT
Parent
No surpise. (Score:5, Insightful)
To us IT folk, the nonsense might seem clear, but to those who are targeted and easily confused, treading waters softly is really a matter of safety, not ignorance.
"top" execs (Score:3, Informative)
So, we're talking about guys who
-jumped on the latest bandwagon without thinking about the actual usefulness of IT for their business
-or maybe were just afraid to look obsolete
-
IT attitudes (Score:5, Insightful)
User Attitudes (Score:5, Insightful)
Employees also tend to blame IT when they got caught browsing porn or running their home business at work.
User: "My computer is broken."
IT: "What's wrong?"
User: "I can't access Myspace"
IT: "That's because we block it."
User: "You suck!"
Parent
If only we were treated as well as utilities (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If only we were treated as well as utilities (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:If only we were treated as well as utilities (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That is the IT Manager's fault. He/She should be selling the value of the department. You don't need to sell upper management the value of a phone, toilet, or lights because they were sold the value when they were kids - at home. However, their home probably did not h
It's not just management (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not just management (Score:5, Interesting)
Because IT can not only allow- but make the customers eager to- enter their own orders- saving you customer service costs and allow you to do the same work with a lot less people.
Because IT can take a 4 week manual process which sometimes completely failed and turn it into a 2-3 day process which is fully accountable.
Because unlike electricity or water, IT changes constantly-- every single day-- and if your company doesn't keep up, the next thing you know you are a year behind your competitors and their costs are 10% lower than yours and you are hemorrhaging customers.
IT is a lump of clay that can be sculpted into anything.
---
We recently found out that one of the other non-IT departments basically wrote a "system by spreadsheet" which requires over a dozen people to maintain. Their director is protecting them from being automated by IT because he would lose most of those people. So don't come talking to me about "IT COSTS". I think it is really a battle for headcount among the departments.
Parent
The Cost Of IT (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
IT deptarments only cost money with constant upgrades, in hardware and software. Lighting fixtures have a one time cost, and then a minimal replacement cost.
every 3 years all hardware and so
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
An intelligent system is to cascade things...Replace a percentage when you have to, and move the machines you replace down
I guess I'm Lucky (Score:5, Interesting)
My personal experience with my IT staff (Score:3, Insightful)
Typical call to IT here?
"Hi, I need to use X piece of software (which is mainstream and well-known). I can't install it myself because I don't have admin rights, can you install it please?"
"Why do you need it?"
"Well [insert many technical reasons here]"
"Sorry, we can't install software that hasn't been approved."
"How do I get it approved?"
"Well it will have to go before the board, which meets every 6 months or so. And you also have to [insert about 100 roadblocks and obstructionist measures here]."
"Great. Screw it, I'll just work from home again."
If you want to know why your IT department is hated, ask yourself how you treat your customers. Do you treat them as your bosses, or as your enemies?
That is not IT department's fault. (Score:5, Interesting)
IT only allows what other people them is allowed. And normally the people saying the last word are auditors of some kind or another.
But is it really a fault?
You see it as obstructionist, but do you have the legal know how to know if the application you want installed is legitimate? Are you going to vouch for its security? (I have seen badly programmed applications, including FOSS ones, bring down complete networks due toe unintended denial of service attacks. Will you take responsibility it the tool you need does such thing?). WIll you put your hands in fire for your application in regards to viruses, trojans and any other nasties?
The obstructionist attitude has a purpose which is to protect the assets and reputation of your company. If that pisses you off, though.
Parent
On the other side of the wall (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We dont just think it, we know it!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Disconnect from both sides... (Score:3)
Well, on the other hand (Score:5, Insightful)
On the third hand, IT departments are often not staffed adequately, either in butts in chair or in the quality of the heads over those butts. It seems absurd to think about using IT to achieve breakthroughs in productivity or competitiveness when they seem to spend more time restricting the work that goes through the department than actually getting things done.
The bottom line is that skill is distributed on a normal curve, and the vast majority of people are mediocre. That includes top management; most companies have mediocre leadership. When the leadership of a company is weak, there's not much IT can do to make things better. They really are just a facilities type function.
It's quite simple, actually (Score:3, Insightful)
IT is not the only department that is misunderstood. For example, Ray Kassar of Atari thought that software programmers were a cost center too, and no different than assembly plant workers. He didn't realize that programmers were vital to how Atari makes money, and thus the best programmers all left Atari and went to start Activision with a business plant o make 3rd party software for Atari.
No, it is a disconnect in three ways (Score:3, Insightful)
When it comes to IT their are THREE parties involved. Those who build it (IT), those who govern it (Management) and those who use it (Employees).
These three groups often have no idea what the other is actually doing.
Have you ever seen one of those programs where the boss of a big company is put to work on the factory floor? They used to be pretty common, was there ever a SINGLE boss, who wasn't shown to be totally clueless about how the actual work was being done?
You think IT is any better? How many people with the best training in IT skills ever bother to go down to the factory floor and SEE the REAL workflow before they implement a system?
You got management trying to make decisions on how to improve a workprocess they don't understand, you got IT trying to implement something that has no basis in reality and employees forced to choose between actually getting the work done and following procedure.
It doesn't suprise me at all that this article doesn't mention the workforce. Management article talking about proper management but ignoring the people who got to do the actuall work, yeah, never seen that before.
Get your hands dirty before you even bother trying to think of implementing IT, FIND out what is REALLY needed. IT can do wonderfull things to be sure, but it needs to fit with what is really going on in your company, not what some manager thinks should be going on.
Make sure your management decisions can be executed, first observe what REALLY goes on, plan your changes, then TRY THEM YOURSELVE, with FULL pressure. If you can't do it, your employees can't do it and what counts isbeing able to do it on the busiest day of the year.
The most perfect example, testing an application with just 3 records in the database for performance. My job was to convert the old data, if I pushed more then ten records in, performance crumbled. Took me MONTHS to confince them that the problem was in the application, not my conversion (for every insert MILLIONS of reads were being done thanks to the most idiotic database design in history (no keys), compounded by some really really bad code). But they TESTED IT and it worked fine. Yah, 3 records and those not even fully fleshed out.
I could rant on for hours about bone-headed mistakes of all kinds, but basically FORCE management to get a clue and the only way to do that is BACK TO THE WORKFLOOR!
99% of IT projects that end up unused or not meeting requirements can simply be explained because they were designed without knowing what the real situation is.
it's geeks vs. results!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that either one is better or doesn't have a place but workers in IT & particularly IT leadership need to start thinking that those business management classes in college are a good idea to at least take & listen in on. You're not going to convince the ones with deep pockets (upper management) to keep you around if you don't show your value up front to them. Sure, their practices may be antiquated but they are time-tested and in their eyes, work.
Geeks are also going to need to realize that not all things are academic, business leaders expect results, not some elegant solution that looks cool in an IDE. There's that classic line from Ghostbusters I remember, "I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there."
Maybe it's not that extreme but that is the truth, like it or not.
I've seen it both ways (Score:4, Insightful)
The people who say IT is mostly support, they have it exactly right. IT is a support function unless the business's main product is IT. Stupid management always devalues the workers, the people who keep the place running. In this regard, IT is not special. Sometimes IT is staffed by arrogant asses who deserve to be mocked, just like you can have rude janitors or marketing weenies. Again, nothing new here.
In a healthy organization, IT's attitude is "How do we make things better?" I'm always the Excel go-to guy since most people don't have the time to learn all the tricks. I'm fine with that. I've got a thousand tricks and most people only need to know a few of them. I set their sheet up the way they need it, they'll learn just the tricks they need and will be happy.
IT is always lacking for resources? Most departments are. My dad worked as a mechanic for the phone company motor pool and he was constantly complaining about how they had to make bricks without straw. Management saw them as nothing more than a cost center, never appreciating the value they provided. They increased the average age of the fleet from 10 to 20 years. Oh, that's great. Yes, you're cutting down on procurement costs but did you notice how maintenance is skyrocketing? No, that chart wasn't in the meeting. That's great.
Good IT makes itself available to the business, makes things run more efficiently and is invaluable. Ask the workers or management what would happen if the IT staff all got hit by a bus. If the response is "Oh my God, we'd be so fucked," that's a good IT department. If they just get this wistful little smile on their faces, that's a bad IT department.
Vendors and Management are the problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
If management had instead gone to IT and said "This is what we need to do" then the real value of IT comes to light as we can work on a solution to that problem, or maybe even give some insight into "Well, with technology, that problem is actually this..let's solve that".
Re:And how does IT view Management? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The value of IT to most businesses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Plumbing - you do it once, it lasts 25 years if not 50. The only upgrades might be for more efficiently flushing toilets and taps that don't drip. That's the equivalent of putting a 750GB hard drive on an original IBM PC.
IT is an essential part of a modern business, and if it's done wrong the business can go down the drains. Wrong can be getting IT in the way of people's jobs, instead of helping them. Sadly this can't be avoided (e.g., third party clients demanding that you use IT for something that only benefits them whilst being a massive inconvenience for the supplier).
I bet many IT guys would love to get paid at the rates plumbers get paid at though. I don't think they'd like the apprenticeship period though
Parent
Re:The value of IT to most businesses... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:The value of IT to most businesses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dept A wants to be hooked into the city sewage system,
Dept B wants a septic tank because they heard it is cheaper
Dept C wants to connect to the county's sewage system because it is new and therefore has to be the best.
Dept D does not want plumbing at all becaus
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd suggest that there are often times that those can be applied to the needs associated with the toilet.