The majority of changes in CA IT are driven by the business.
Exactly! As it should be. (As it better be.) The challenge for IT is to prove what they want is in the best interest of the business, not the IT department. We know that, we just have trouble communicating it.
Why should the business care about getting new servers or having developers waste their time rewriting already functioning code?
It's your job to answer that question. They just don't know. I had a client with slow response times the previous holiday season. Business had doubled since then. I had to paint a clear picture of what it would be like on the same infrastruture for the upcoming holiday season. x dollars spent vs. y business lost. That's a language they can understand.
Most people in corporate IT want to do a good job.
And that job is much more than development or administration. One of corporate IT's biggest job is education. We shouldn't blame others for not understanding what is clear to us. It's also our job to get them to "see the light".
(Maybe that's why I like hacking so much. I find it much easier communicating with my computer than with the bosses.)
Not necessarily as it should be. Many modern business models really are, at their core, automation problems. Think of the heavily automated factory, or brokerage. These firms clearly need "domain expertise" in what they do, but the minute-to-minute operation of the business is done not by the experts, but by the automation systems.
In such a circumstance, it might make sense for the "IT" department to actually run the show, and use the experts in a consulting role. Instead, as the linked blog points out, the opposite is usually true.
And it's not like this hasn't been done. Look at Amazon: that's exactly what they are. Business-wise, they're just another mail order retailer. But they think of themselves as a software company, and they've been immensely successful.
Amazon's excellent technology is the result of IT serving its business requirements, not the cause of it.
Although they started out selling books, they had a grander vision. Sometimes I wonder if AWS was really planned or if it's just a byproduct of IT doing its job so well. This wouldn't be the first time a non-tech firm has become a tech firm once it realized that its most valuable asset was the techology it developed to serve its original needs.
I guess there's sort of a chicken and egg thing here, so your point isn't really falsifiable. But again, the way Amazon is structured is as a software company. They build a product, and then hand that off to the operations side to implement. The big movers and decision makers in the company are on the product development side, and not on the implementation side.
That structure is the reverse of the typical corporate IT structure, where the people developing the product are routinely taking orders from the people who need to use those products.
Still, those refactorings can be justified as necessary enhancements, important to the survival of the business.
For that, of course, you need a relationship where there is a strong leader at the head of the IT organisation, who's willing to set priorities that will satisfy both the business and IT, and where the business side respects the IT organisation so that they don't constantly attempt to steam-roller over IT initiatives with their own urgent changes.
So, effectively, a stronger IT organisation is required. Despite the OP's assertion that IT departments are full of smart people, they are also full of not-so-smart people who don't do a good job. Once the business side is stung by repeated delays and issues, they stop trusting the IT side and the problems start increasing...
I have to disagree with you somewhat here. Until businesses stop seeing IT departments only as "cost centers" you'll be able to try to "convince" them of what's in their interest until you're blue in the face. And I don't believe it's only IT's job to convince the business what is needed. Many businesses need to take a more active role in analyzing and understanding what IT departments do for them- they're the ones footing the bill, after all. You wouldn't make a new investment or buy a new (insert item her) without first UNDERSTANDING what you're getting, would you?
Furthermore, my company views all IT department spending as a cost and only a cost. But think about this: in the last several years, we developed a sophisticated (insurance) Simulated Rating Engine that actually performs rating of policies for underwriters. This rating information directly makes our company money- either by raising the amount of premium we charge, or lowering the exposure for claims against the company. But I can guarantee you won't get the company to consider this IT "making" them money. They paid a fixed cost for some magical technology black box. Now, the results of USING the black box are counted toward the underwriters, not IT.
This is just one concrete example of why I believe CA attitudes about IT contributions to the business need to change. Without that type of shift, IT will always be just another cost on the balance sheet- only able to take orders from the business (even if we are actively changing things and/or doing what's in the company's interest).
There's an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review that breaks down the relationship between IT and the business depending on two factors: the reliability of IT and the need for IT innovation in the line of business.
The result is that you can lump the relationship of IT and the business into 4 categories:
Defensive: Factory Mode (High Reliability Need, Low Innovation Need)
Defensive: Support Mode (Low Reliability Need, Low Innovation Need)
Offensive: Strategic Mode (High Reliability Need, High Innovation Need)
Offensive: Turnaround Mode (Low Reliability Need, High Innovation Need)
If the blog poster worked for a company in the defensive mode categories, his approach would definitely not be welcome in most cases, unless he had a major reliability argument.
Hopefully, he found a position in a company aligned with the Offensive side of the quadrants.
The article I mentioned is Nolan & McFarlen, "Information Technology and the Board of Directors", Harvard Business Review, Oct 2005.
Over the years I found that the fundamental problem between IT and Business people is trust.
IT folks (me included) consider themselves too smart for the MBA guys, as they call them, incapable of understanding the basics principles. IT folks rarely bother to speak frankly in company meetings because they thinks other folks will never get it; they push everyone else to consider then as a black box with ability to solve business life saving problems.
The reality is the MBA guys runs the business and are force to interact with the inhuman black box like they will do with a vending machine: You place an order, get results and move on.
This article really hit the nail on the head about what's wrong with large corporate IT. Unless your business is IT, the upper management just don't understand it, therefore it's just part of doing business.
I find the commonality are IT people who struggle with communicating technology in-plain-english to those that do not live it 24/7. If there is a logical business case to be made, then you should not have a problem getting budget approval (all things considered). That said, I've experienced IT departments looking to build a Rolls Royce infrastructure (disregarding cost-benefit) just because it looks good on paper, when in fact a Lexus-equivalent would have done just fine.
Furthermore, some IT people live in fear of their jobs becoming commoditized by self-sustaining technology so they enact extremely complex systems to bring value to their job. Upper management does not turn-over like an IT department... they remember the claims brought about by the former, and rightfully hesitant in their decision to embrace the latest and greatest kool-aid.
Certainly corporate America has it's faults, no doubt. But a majority of the time I've found the IT department to be one of the most miserable teams to work with at a non-tech company.
Well, it depends. It's not a competitive advantage for instance if your payroll goes through on time every month, it's just what's expected. It is a competitive advantage if you have say better employee retention than your rivals.
Similarly, it's not a competitive advantage if your printers are always full of paper and toner. It is a competitive advantage if you can automate things that previously required manual operation.
Finance and HR are seen as an integral part of the company, IT is seen as a vendor. It is very much and patron-client relationship, when it should be a partnership
Exactly! As it should be. (As it better be.) The challenge for IT is to prove what they want is in the best interest of the business, not the IT department. We know that, we just have trouble communicating it.
Why should the business care about getting new servers or having developers waste their time rewriting already functioning code?
It's your job to answer that question. They just don't know. I had a client with slow response times the previous holiday season. Business had doubled since then. I had to paint a clear picture of what it would be like on the same infrastruture for the upcoming holiday season. x dollars spent vs. y business lost. That's a language they can understand.
Most people in corporate IT want to do a good job.
And that job is much more than development or administration. One of corporate IT's biggest job is education. We shouldn't blame others for not understanding what is clear to us. It's also our job to get them to "see the light".
(Maybe that's why I like hacking so much. I find it much easier communicating with my computer than with the bosses.)