03.29.08
Deadlines and Duct Tape Released
On March 20th. 2008, the press release for my new book “Deadlines and Duct Tape” went out. The book reflected years of observation of the Information Technology business and the continuing disconnect between business management and IT management. Both are trying to do their very best job, but often fail to produce quality work. The people are good, but the process needs help.
It is interesting, but most IT professionals know exactly what is meant by a duct tape solution. They even chuckle when they hear the name of the book. They know what the book is about due to their personal experiences. It is these personal experiences that this blog is about. Its purpose is to annonomously expose others duct tape solutions so we can all laugh at how it was done and be saddend by the impact on the company stuck with it.
Please share your experiences. Possibly, you may help someone else avoid the same fate. I will share my experiences of the past as well.
Phil Runciman said,
September 30, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Why are there no comments to be seen?
Who was the target readership for this book? I love the great war stories but the book does not hit the spot for me.
IMHO the core problem being addressed by your book is worse than you think it is. You often have more intelligence stored in IS/IT than in the business. This problem is huge in SMBs. I have only ever worked with two decent sets of managers. One in an airline and the other in healthcare.
The airline did do a top-down strategic study and this convinced them that they had some business problems that were so complex that they had to “work the problem”. This took 15 years to complete with input from successive teams in a top 50 university. They have remained profitable while others swim in red ink. Their top management team were very smart and mentally agile. Our IS team was small, but we enabled them to develop a really good understanding of how the components of the business fitted together and where the significant information flows occured. We did keep IT right out of the scene… for as long as we could.
The healthcare organisation was swamped in national political problems, but we did make some major gains by persuading our government to change its policy direction (by the back door) and getting better funding for our tertiary capabilities. Again our IS/IT supplied the internal consultancy to facilitate parts of this process.
Sadly, these experiences are too rare. In one company I actually had to tell them that their team did not know enough about operational planning to come up with a set of requirements! They listened to me and followed my recommendations. (I think it was with great relief.) They did succeed, by using the consultancy that came with an integrated package, to sort themselves out.
FWIW In Europe had moved to data-driven approaches before OO arrived, which when linked to structured-programming, was very powerful. I had a newbie programmer out perform an experienced programmer. The newbie was taught Jackson structured programming.
You omitted mention of MDA/MDE. I know of a team of 3 persons who deliver functionality so fast the business cannot keep up. Their tool is not even full MDE. They work in insurance and have become domain experts in their own right. Google: OlivaNova, Mendix, Comactivity and see their stuff. These products represent a major shift. Intalio is in a similar space but more BPMS oriented.
Another major omission was an explicit discussion of information intensive businesses and the trend towards this paradigm. It is this process that shifted IT from the operational into the tactical, and from the tactical into the strategic, and now from the strategic into a sphere where the actual business mission is up for grabs. (How best do we lever our IP?) This was kind of implied but the shift has been very significant.
There are ex-IT CEOs because of this shift. One I know of was in banking.
IS/IT is actually a major player in the strategic game and is busy changing every sphere. Social networking is changing marketing, politics, and so on.
Cheers,
Phil