The Real Silver Bullet
John Schmidt has written an interesting piece on his perspective on what will solve the IT-industry issue of poor delivery. He provides compelling evidence for this condition just in case there is any doubt. I am in full agreement with his conclusion that the industry lacks leadership; not so much on the sell side as in the IT function of end user organisations.
John proposes a silver bullet that comprises: configuration management, systems integration, program management and information architecture. Get these right and suddenly IT projects are delivered on time and IT systems deliver real business value. He points out that software engineering is not a key element because the IT industry already does that very well. In my experience software engineering peaked as a concept in the eighties and has slid downhill ever since. So it is my view that software engineering needs tighter leadership.
John disagrees with the notion that executives become more tech savvy as a step towards better business-IT communications. He thinks this is akin to asking executives to prepare themselves to build their own systems if they really want them built correctly. This is an extreme take on executive technology education. My view is that executives do need to be tech savvy but only to the extent that enables them to govern IT in respect of maximising the return on this often expensive asset. So absolving executives from having to embrace IT is to send them down the path of poor corporate governance.
In any case silver bullets focused purely on technology action will do no more than solve technology management issues. But if one is interested in yielding greater value from one’s IT investment then the silver bullet needs to embrace business strategy and processes, people and service. Until we address the ‘IT problem’ in its wider business context we are in danger of simply making IT more efficiently ineffective.
That said John makes a variety of interesting points and invariably when so many points are made in such a relatively short piece it is easy for the likes of me to find issue!
