8 Things We Hate about I.T.: How to Move Beyond the Frustrations to Form a New Partnership with I.T.Why can't operational managers ever get what they really want from IT? Why is the relationship so fraught with frustration from all parties? IT managers and business leaders simply don't understand each other, the way they think, the pressures they face, and the goals they are trying to achieve. Enter Susan Cramm, the prospective Deborah Tannen of the Business-IT relationship. - Personality-wise, if men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then the IT people are from Microsoft and their business partners are from Apple - In spite of great effort to become more business-smart, line and IT managers have very different backgrounds and experiences which make it difficult to communicate what they do and why and how they do it - Different pressures and incentives further increase the difficulty of forming positive IT-business relationships. While line managers need to "get 'er done now" to support the needs of their function or units (or pay the price in terms of near term business results and bonuses), IT managers need to "get 'er done right" to support the longer term needs of the enterprise (or pay the price in terms of fragmented, fragile systems.) The key to reconciling these and other differences is to figure out how to manage the paradox. If you want to get what you want from IT, you need to shift your perspective and look through the eyes of your IT partners. Doing so will allow you to develop a single version of "truth" and give you the insight necessary to change the relationship for the better. Similarly, this book will help dispel the notion that managers can "hand off" their IT responsibility to the IT organization and will provide the tools to incorporate the management of IT into their daily leadership agenda and repertoire. Business leaders should assume accountability for IT, much as they have assumed accountability for the management of the financial and human resource asset, and build the necessary capabilities into their organization. The core ideas in this book also promise to have applicability to managing other relationships between business units and specialized service providers. Think supply-chain management, or better yet, graphic design. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
You Need Service and IT Needs Control | 15 |
You Need Results and IT Needs Respect | 29 |
You Need to Focus on Tactics and IT Needs | 43 |
You Need IT Funding and IT Needs Returns | 63 |
You Need Ontime Delivery and IT Needs Quality | 85 |
You Need Customization and IT Needs | 107 |
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accountable alignment allow applications approach approval architecture authority better budget business leaders business partners business processes business strategy chapter collaboration commitment companies complexity costs create customers decision define deliver delivery demand management develop don’t drive enable ensure enterprise executives existing expect experiments financial find focus functionality funding future give going governance Harvard hate ideas identify impact implement improve increase initiatives innovation interests investments IT-enabled IT-smart it’s keep KTLO lead levels measures meet ment move necessary objectives Once operating organization percent performance planning problem providing realized reduce relationship reporting requests requirements responsibility Review risk serve share Smart spend standardization strategy success sure things tion trying understand unit users What’s