I suppose we could use split beer mats, but I am more of a traditionalist when it comes to materials. You just can’t beat the back of a Capstan Full Strength packet when you are scoping out a multimillion IT spend.

And, it seems, I am not the only traditionalist, if you look at the proceedings of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which recently* challenged Peter Gershon, former OGC Chief executive, over his concerns about major projects that seemed to have been planned on the back of cigarette packets.

Of course, Mr Gershon’s comments in an earlier speech were probably made for dramatic effect, rather than as a matter of record. But you never know.

We may well find in another 40 years or so that we see a whole raft of declassified fag packets made available for public scrutiny. Future technologists will examine their cryptic hieroglyphics, desperate for clues and insights into why government computing in the early 21st century cost so much and took so long.

Perhaps one day the British Museum will juxtapose a grubby Silk Cut carton alongside the Rosetta Stone of ancient Egypt and we will all marvel at the quantum leap in world knowledge derived from these apparently disparate artefacts.

An amusing prospect indeed. But with a serious undertone because in my experience some of the best IT management ideas have been those that were hastily scribbled on fag packets, beer mats and table napkins.

Very often our most incisive and decisive plans can be scribbled on ephemeral objects, such as whiteboards and flip-charts, only to lose their intellectual strength and integrity when transposed to a more formal medium for presentation to others.

I don’t know any IT director who would feel comfortable laying out a strategic plan to the board while clutching a crumpled fag packet or a soggy beer mat. It would be like walking naked down a crowded street so we instinctively reach for our high-tech comfort blankets: powerpoint and colour laserprints, to sell our idea “properly”.

And yet the original scribbled notes are probably the most valuable view of the plan because they were conceived in innocence, before being translated and traduced for the intended audience. Too often we will dilute and disguise a concept during translation from the fag packet to the board pack, in the hope that we will gain stakeholder acceptance, sometimes at great cost to project integrity.

Too often, I have seen excellent first-cut project plans that have been doctored to produce politically acceptable outcomes, at least in terms of cost and timescale, by injudiciously tweaking resource estimates until budget and calendar objectives are met, rather than by de-scoping activities and deliverables.

It’s no wonder then that so many projects subsequently over-run some or all of the three key measures of cost, time and quality; because we have compromised our original, and probably most accurate, vision of the task and the effort to achieve.

Perhaps we should get cigarette manufacturers to put a suitably large warning message on their packets. Something like: “Cutting project resource estimates without descoping activities can seriously damage your project…”

Don’t knock the ideas scribbled on the back of cigarette packets. That’s when they’re at their freshest, and start to dull from the moment they are translated to the flipchart or Powerpoint presentation.

[*I wrote this article in May 2004 but the principles remain valid]

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The cost of Government IT is not just about poor procurement, or even poor in-house IT skills (which I dispute).

In my view, the fundamental problem is twofold.Firstly there is an outdated focus on IT; secondly political policy is intrinsically dynamic and this characteristic is frustrated by the lack of a proper Systems strategy for effective policy implementation.

Until these two factors are addressed, the Cinderella of Government IT will always be accompanied by two ugly sisters: unexpected cost and disappointment.

The Public Accounts Committee of the UK Parliament has recently drawn attention to the sorry state of Government IT. This is long overdue awareness, for those of us who have been shouting about the issues for many, many years.

The Trillion Dollar Bonfire burns unabated – and occasionally a few wisps of smoke cloud the media horizon!

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Readers of this book get a no-holds barred perspective of Marshall’s magic – and an intriguing insight into the inner workings of the Redmond giant.

Anecdotes from within the fortress walls are always interesting but the big payoff from BurningThe Ships is a real learning opportunity for those people and organizations who want to share in the largely untapped value of their intellectual property assets. This book is a primer for better business, in any field not just technology.

According to Phelps and Kline, Forbes estimates the opportunity value of unrealised intellectual property at a trillion dollars, per annum; unrealised because many businesses have yet to work out how to really exploit their knowledge assets. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that action?

The universal business principles described in Burning The Ships are all about relationship building, collaboration and maturity; values that have not always been associated with Microsoft, historically a predatory corporation par excellence. There are some who will never be convinced that the leopard can change its spots but the evidence is there. Over the past few years Microsoft has built invaluable bridges by collaborating with a large number of competitors, well beyond their traditional value chain partners; a difficult journey, no doubt, but worthwhile.

Not least of the difficulties described by the authors is the challenge of relaxing long-held personal and corporate beliefs.

Most of us guard our secrets carefully and worry about losing real value if we open the kimono and let others see what we have been hiding. Agreeing to share intellectual property, either on a commercial or non-commercial basis, is total anathema to many businesspeople. It’s also a legal minefield that needs extremely careful navigation.

But attitudes are changing and I genuinely believe that an increasingly joined-up world requires effective joined-up management thinking, which naturally embraces collaborative development for mutual benefit.

Burning The Ships will show you not only how to lighten the load of your own baggage, by radically rethinking your historical approach to Intellectual Property but also how to build valuable new business relationships through collaboration.

So this book is worth its weight in gold, which is highly appropriate because the quest for gold in the New World drove Conquistador Hernando Cortez to burn his expedition’s ships, thereby symbolically and practically demonstrating that there would be no going back. Marshall Phelps persuaded IBM and Microsoft to follow the example of Cortez, with tremendous returns. His experiences and David Kline’s writing expertise combine to smooth your path to a better business future. Highly recommended.

Burning The Ships
Intellectual Property and the Transformation 0f Microsoft
Marshall Phelps and David Kline

2009 John Wiley & Sons Inc, New Jersey
ISBN 978-0-470-43215-0

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