The IT Skeptic - Comments for "How business has failed IT like a bad parent"

Another debate

JamesFinister — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:04:20 +0000

Rob,

I think Dan's points are also relevant to the discussion you and I have been having offline about professionalism in IT. We need to train IT managers, and the business (and preferably in the same room) about what each other does. Of course it is traditional in some IT units to deride anyone in the business who claims to know about IT as an amateur, and the business don't want IT telling them how to run their core activities.

Perhaps the future lies in more IT content in generalist business courses and qualifications, with tailoring to enable them to serve the needs of the IT centric business manager and the business centric IT manager

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

a child of the 70s

skeptic — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:57:00 +0000

Many a child of the 70s had that issue. Perhaps IT will grow up to renounce its hippy parents' long hair and drugs. I guess thats' already what we are doing by running the shop while the business goofs off

Hmmm

Dan Kane — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 04:51:59 +0000

I just came across this and find it very interesting. I need to ruminate on this one. I may yet change my mind.

I absolutely agree that IT needs to understand the business more than they need to understand IT, and I really like the parent-child analogy. The first point on failure to govern IT is right on target, and ISO 38500 is a great place to start; but isn't the second point really a bi-product of failure to govern? The argument of where these functions should reside isn't that important, is it? (However, as much as I personally love training, I have a hard time figuring our why training is almost always an IT function. Training existed long before IT, so the "it's always been there" argument doesn't hold for that one) As long as the functions are appropriately defined and governed, they should be fine almost anywhere in the business. But there's the rub. Change, release, project management, etc., as you describe well, are part of IT only because that's where they started. I get the point that they are less and less about the technology, but IT is also becoming less and less about technology. We're quickly becoming brokers of technology more than providers. Ultimately I couldn't care less where the functions reside, as long as corporate leadership defines what they are supposed to do, provides resources to get the work done, and hold the functions accountable for results.

In too many organizations that doesn't happen. So IT must take on the work AND take on responsibility for determining what the expectations should be. The remaining question is, how do the children get their parents to take responsibility?

Perfect

Ivan — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 20:48:44 +0000

Rob, sometimes you surprises me... You are absolutely right:)

Amen

John Worthington aka MySvcMon — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:03:53 +0000

totally agree 1,000% ... especially # 2 !!

John M. Worthington
MyServiceMonitor, LLC