We all know that IT projects can over run in terms of budget or planning. And worse, they can outright fail. One of the reasons for this is that some piece of software or hardware is being used for the wrong reasons. I don’t mean that it is being misused. What I mean is that the product shouldn’t be used because it cannot do the job.
I’ve seen this a few times. IT and users will evaluate products, make recommendations, and then something else which got low marks is acquired and forced on the business. The common denominator in the scenarios that I have encountered is company politics. For example, I once worked with a company that acquired a dodgy-ware monitoring solution because a director had something to do with the vendor. There’s a valid technical and functionality reason! Not. It was no surprise that the IT department was back in the bad old days of relying on users to tell that that a system was broken or performing poorly.
Something that I’ve learned is that users will rebel. For example, if some storage/collaboration solution proves to be untrustworthy and unusable, then users will find shared folders to use, even if there are no official file servers. Users are inventive. An Access database will replace a SQL one. A SaaS application will replace some expensive internal application. Selft-servicing provisioning of virtual machines and cloud computing are making this easier and easier because a team/department with a budget can become independent of the IT department. In the end, the official system is underused, and becomes a massive waste of budget and effort. There will be dictates from management that it must be used – but more often than not that’s a “do as I say, not as I do” policy because the responsible manager is probably using My Documents to store everything.
And this all becomes a mess. Who’s backing it up? Who is managing regulatory/corporate compliance and security? We covered this in 1st year Systems Analysis classes in college so this should not be a big leap for an “experienced” CIO … OK, they’re usually accountants who are landed with this job so think about the wasted money and the cost to resolve the situation if you make the wrong decisions, knowing that users won’t live with them … for the benefit of productivity which is more important than some directors ego.
So this one goes out to the IT steering committees and CIOs out there: buy and use products for the right reasons, not for company politics.