IT Value Stack

Why are enterprise applications so dumb?

James Taylor wrote an interesting piece on Enterprise Decision Management blog He highlights that enterprise applications today, whilst supporting the movement of data between business functions, do not support automated decision-making, thus necessitating humans remaining in the ‘supply chain’. This leads to slower, more costly and error-prone transactions.
This is an interesting area as EDM can be seen as the end-game to obviating the need for humans in organizations. This theme has been visited many times under the guises of workflow, artificial intelligence and case-based reasoning. However my thinking does gravitate towards this apocalyptic and inevitable outcome.
But between now and the ‘humanless office’, organizations will need to make better decisions, quicker and with less cost. The IT industry needs to ramp up the value it delivers and smarter systems appear to be the way forward. The question is whether the neuro-cyber-scientists can deliver.

Oracle’s Hot New Offering: Gobbledygook

Ben Worthen took a swipe at both Oracle and technobabble in general with is latest recent Wall Street Journal piece. It's a good read. Technobabble in my view is a form of techno-autism. Some technologists ( I was one) do not seem to have the empathy skills to understand that the people they are trying to address are not always technologists. This condition has led to the IT department being the source and target of much ridicule. This issue is addressed in my book linked to this blog.

I try to help business people understand IT terms through my earlier book – IT Demystified.

But it is not a one sided issue. Users need to get their heads around IT. And in defence of Oracle, if they are targeting an IP based solution at senior technology decision makers then there is no issue. But if their advert is posted in the business press then their PR department needs a little help.

Running IT as a business has its limits

I recently read Chris Potts piece on CIO.com where he explores the idea of the IT department being run as a business. He sees the sense in this but guards against getting too carried away with the notion because unlike a real business it does not have access to growth funding through shareholders or banks.

All true unless you actually turn your IT department into a business and truly expose it to the cold winds of commerce. The organisation from which it sprung may want to retain a majority shareholding, but the IT function is free to pursue other customers.

In my view (and experience), when put in an 'eat what you kill' situation it is very focusing. The hobbyist projects disappear as do the under performing staff. All love is directed towards the clients' condition. If the sales function feels it would be better to spend its budget on more sales staff and less on sales support technology then the IT function suffers. Alternatively the IT function could develop its own sales function and convince the customer that they need to reverse their thinking.

I want to keep the torch burning on the 'IT as a business' model. In most cases taking the IT function to market would perhaps be extreme, but the threat of it might cause some CIOs to raise their game.

HBR - What Medicine Can Teach Us About Decision-Making

I came across a very interesting article on the Harvard Business School website - click here. Whilst the focus was on how corporates could learn from the medical world's approach to 'error handling', it did resonate my own career development in the IT industry.

I broke my arm very badly circa 20 years ago. Bone through the forearm, severing an artery, requiring 4 operations and some permanent metalwork. Whilst in this vulnerable state in hospital, I became acutely aware of how reliant I was on the doctors and nurses for both day-to-day survival and prospective wellness. Notably this thought didn’t trigger anxiety because I was struck by their professionalism. If you like, as an industry, medicine had got its PR act together and the professionals at St Barts hospital in London were delivering on the brand promises.

It struck me that the IT industry is so far behind the curve in this respect that something needed to be done, and in any case I was going to raise my game whether the rest of the industry did or did not. In latter years I have tried to play a part in improving the level of professionalism within the IT industry, albeit in a modest way. But I thank the medical industry for sending me down this path.

Given that the medical industry has had a head start of a couple of millennia, we should perhaps all be looking at what we can learn from the medical industry.

Technology management is a board issue

My most recent piece in the Financial Times stresses the importance of the technology management at board level. Click here to read the article. Here I am trying to shift the thinking that IT is just an IT department issue to being one that needs boardroom control. Given that IT is a significant investment of corporate spend simply leaving its management to a division of the business seems very much to me like poor governance.

I have had a number of discussions on this with business leaders and practically all disagree that choice of programming language is not a business-call. I think it is if there are strategic business implications. I mention this in the FT piece.

Anand Sanwal author of Corporate Portfolio Management posted a comment in response to  this article via his own blog, which can be read via the following link. Click here.  Anand suggested that I was propagating the 'IT as a victim' theme. Possibly I was. However my overriding thrust is that the boardroom should raise its game in respect of IT value maximisation, but so should the IT function. Though the latter view may not have rung so loud in this recent piece. I believe the IT function,lead by the CIO, needs to drive business at boardroom level. Unfortunately there is a dearth of such CIOs. I think this is in part because the CFOs clip their wings at the outset, and in part because the CIO sausage machine is not in general churning out the right DNA profile for what is needed.

I am in agreement with the bulk of Anand's assertions. My views are well documented on FT.com. But even with a boardroom-ready CIO there needs to be sufficient IT-competence round the table to challenge his/her decisions in line with good governance practice.

If IT does not alter an outcome, its role is meaningless

Paul Wallis CTO of Stroma Software wrote an interesting piece on the role of IT in business. Click here.

I agree with his comments. The IT function is often too focused on the delivery of a system as opposed to the delivery of better circulation within the business. By circulation I mean data, information, knowledge and even wisdom. Great systems that don't circulate what's needed to the users when and where it is required are of no value. This is a critical issue in respect of corporate governance. And in a fast moving market any delays in market sensitive data arriving at the appropriate user could be business threatening. I get into this in a big way along with Cognos and other major players in my IT Value Stack book.