culture

When IT advice is being handed out, by frameworks and books or by the chattering internet, there is much talk about the importance of having "executive support". It is tossed about in lots of contexts that involve cultural change or process improvement - my own one just happens to be ITSM: ITIL V3 etc. This is one of the most repeated glib statements in the IT world. What if you don't?

Sometimes IT really matters. It feels different.

Worldwide there is an overall IT professional accreditation spreading, in the UK (CITP), Europe, the USA, Australia and other places. Not before time.
For too long IT managers have accepted poor documentation, subverted change control and general ill-discipline from IT technical staff simply because they held the sacred knowledge about the technology under their care.
The understanding is emerging that the long-term health of IT depends more on professional behaviour: good process, good data, good record-keeping… a good culture amongst the staff. There is less patience with the prima-donnas and the cowboys.

Here's a great post “It’s The People Stupid”. I almost agree with it, but I think the writer talks around the most important point: “Change The People Stupid”.

It greatly concerns me the huge numbers of people being sent on ITIL Foundation training. Given the cost of ITIL certification, I suggest companies who send staff on theoretical ITIL training - other than the small number actually involved in designing the transformation - are wasting their money. The real target group for that theoretical training are the specialists and consutants. My recommendations are:

My original article Community, Activity, Environment is no longer available at the original website so I am reposting it here.
The IT industry does not have a good track record for introducing new things. Projects fail, products don’t fit, results are unexpected, users are unhappy. “People Process Technology” is a useful model to help us do better, but it gets ignored more often than it gets applied. The IT Skeptic suggests redefining it to new terms will improve its acceptance. If we apply it more, we should have less IT failures.

My original article People, Practices, Things is no longer available online on the original website. It is reproduced here. I later proposed an alternate model of Community, Activity, Environment.

Change is about people. Without people, change doesn't happen. Without their assent, buy-in, cooperation, enthusiasm and effort, change doesn't happen. it seems this can't be said too often. The latest survey from McKinsey Quarterly Creating organizational transformations (McKinseys being an analyst firm whose crap factoids are less crap than most) says it all:

Let's have an experiment. View the following cartoon from GamingWorks' ABC, Attitude Behaviour and Culture, and then tell us your response to the statement "IT has no respect for or understanding of customers and users":

Radical concept: to roll out new processes you need to talk to people. Firing emails at them does not count.