We regularly hear “there is no such thing as an IT project, only business initiatives.” But we don’t need to look far to find business initiatives being managed as IT projects.
The UK public sector is ripe with examples, such as the NHSpFIT, Medical Training Application Scheme (MTAS), Identity Cards, Farm Payment Scheme etc. etc.
Picture credit: jek
Apart from the obvious combination of Government and IT project, each of these high-profile initiatives has two common themes: disappointment and unexpected cost.
We ignore this at our peril and we must ask why this still happens. Aren’t we getting better at IT?
Well the fact is that we are getting better at IT but the never ending series of expensive cock-ups shows that we are clearly not getting any better at managing change.
Of course, IT is not to blame, not the primary culprit for any failure. But poor selection and application of technology are crippling symptoms of a much bigger problem – our overwhelming subservience to the prevailing IT paradigm.
IT has become the be all and end all for far too many people. We call ourselves IT professionals; our magazines and newspapers deal exclusively in IT terms and far too many business interactions are predicated on the mistaken belief that IT needs to get closer to the business.
In my view, IT and business are already too close for comfort. Too close because the narrow focus on IT invariably neglects the broader nature of the overlying information systems, at great detriment to our ability to achieve effective information systems.
Of course, IT is a vital part of a modern system but by no means represents the whole recipe. After all, if you baked a cake with flour alone, your customers would not thank you for the results, they would rightly ask: what happened to the eggs, butter and sugar, do you expect me to eat this crumby mess?
To be honest, that is exactly what I think is happening with many of our so-called IT projects, we are forgetting to put in the proper ingredients.
An information system needs much more than dollops of technology, it needs proper proportions of people, organisation, process and data. Technology isn’t quite the icing on the cake but it should be measured in similar terms, if we want to achieve palatable results.
To deliver true value we need a whole new outlook, based holistically on information systems, not just information technology.
A new IS paradigm will be a natural step, marking further progress in our evolutionary journey from the earlier paradigms of computing, data processing and IT.
We need to break free from the hobbles of the IT paradigm and start talking seriously about IS instead.
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