8 Things We Hate About IT: How to Move Beyond the Frustrations to Form a New Partnership with IT
For most business managers, the relationship with IT can be summed up in a word: frustrating! Exploiting technology often requires sorting through convoluted processes, data, and systems only to, find requests mired in red tape and projects late and over budget. But here's something you probably don't know: those things you hate about IT? Your IT leaders hate them too. So stop complaining—and start collaborating with the people who can help fix the problems.\ In 8 Things We Hate About IT,...
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Why can't you get what you really want from IT? All you desire is a ready-and-willing partner to help you exploit IT to drive your business. Instead, you get endless rules and regulations, not to mention processes, projects, and technologies that deliver too little, too late, for too much. It's frustrating!How to build a relationship that puts you firmly in control and produces the business results you need? In The 8 Things We Hate About IT, Susan Cramm provides the answers. Start by understanding differences between operational and IT managers - in backgrounds, personality, pressures, and incentives. Cramm explains how differences prevent operational managers and IT from communicating what, why, and how they do what they do. Citing case studies and stories, the author then presents practical strategies for overcoming the difficulty. These include seeing things from your IT partners' perspective, developing a single version of 'truth,' and assuming accountability for IT just as you've done for management of your firm's financial and human resources.Brutally honest, provocative, and filled with sound advice, this book reveals that the key to solving the IT problem is decidedly un-IT: it's a deeper understanding of human behavior, including how to apply your leadership skills to the world of IT.
What To Expect In This Book This book is organized by the “eight hates” outline above, with a chapter dedicated to each to examine and reconcile the frustrations. We will change the “ors” into “ands” by answering the following questions:\ Chapter 1: How can serve in a controlled manner?\ Chapter 2: How can we deliver results while enhancing the relationship?\ Chapter 3: How can we identify tactics that are grounded in strategy?\ Chapter 4: How can we make sure our expenses are investments?\ Chapter 5: How can deliver quickly, with quality?\ Chapter 6: How can we have customized standardization?\ Chapter 7: How can we innovate in spite of the bureaucracy?\ Chapter 8: How can transform from good to great IT?\ In reading this book, business leaders may feel like I am letting IT off easy and making the whole IT-business relationship thing their problem to solve. I am. The only person you can change is you and, in the process of changing yourself, IT will be forced to change. Great relationships aren’t 50-50, they are 100-100 with each party doing whatever they can to meet the needs of the other. But rest assured, while I am nagging you, the business leader, I am also implicitly holding IT accountable for being a good partner. In the last chapter, I make the implicit, explicit by summarizing what you should expect from IT, and if you aren’t getting it, outlining how to serve yourself if IT is incapable of doing so.
Introduction 11 You Need Service, and IT Needs Control 152 You Need Results, and IT Needs Respect 293 You Need to Focus on Tactics, and IT Needs Strategic Alignment 434 You Need IT Funding, and IT Needs Returns 635 You Need On-time Delivery, and IT Needs Quality 856 You Need Customization, and IT Needs Standardization 1077 You Need Innovation, and IT Functions in Bureaucracy 1258 You Need Good IT, and IT Can Become Great 141Appendix A A Primer on Fast-Cycle Development 157Appendix B Emerging Technologies 161Appendix C Key Responsibilities of the New Business-IT Partnership 167Notes 171Index 181About the Author 193
