I read this very thought provoking article by “JB Surveyer”. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that the article is saying, but it got me thinking about IT organisations and the way that they spend money these days, and what technologies that money is spent on.

For many organisations, IT systems have enabled them to scale their service delivery beyond what they could have achieved on the backs of a workforce performing every transaction manually. IT has become a drug which we are now dependant on. Its interesting then that this article points to a tightening of the belt on the horizon and draws some conclusions:

“Finally, to complete the caught in the middle theme, IT shops are being asked to do more with less in resources like dollar, manpower, and/or infrastructure just at a time when computing and IT have become the critical “command and control” system for most organizations. So catastrophe enabling solutions are being invoked: across the board cutbacks, hiring freezes, staff churn, outsourcing instead of informed redeployment of scarce resources. It is sort of like the Relief Aid for the Tsunami in Southeast Asia - the problem is not the dollar amounts or the willingness to help - but the ability to co-ordinate to deliver the right aids, at the right time, in the right places and the right quantities. Given the backlog of projects and persistently dwindling resources, IT shops are really in the relief aid business - better put the tools and practices in place for this type operation for some years to come.”

I’ve of the opinion that IT organisations tend to do one of two things:

• Think tactically and act in a strategic timeframe – thus negating the benefit of making a tactical decision. This has all to do with getting things like purchase approvals for commodity hardware signed off to starting up short run sub $150K projects in a timely manner.
• Think strategically and act in a tactical timeframe – this is perhaps even worse. Many organisations will throw everything they have at a strategic goal without thinking about it, this is most easily recognised in overnight decisions to outsource entire IT departments or projects or replace all their existing systems with technology X.

I also sometimes think that IT is becoming an indicator of economic prosperity which isn’t a good place to be since you tend to ride the highest highs but also the lowest lows. Maybe it boils down to the way that budgets are done in tier one organisations. I’ve seen some teams blow out their estimates five fold to ensure that they get as much money as they did last year. This basically leads to a misallocation of resources – just stuff to ponder on a Monday night.