Cookies help us display personalized product recommendations and ensure you have great shopping experience.

By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    data analytics and truck accident claims
    How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
    7 Min Read
    predictive analytics for interior designers
    Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
    8 Min Read
    image fx (67)
    Improving LinkedIn Ad Strategies with Data Analytics
    9 Min Read
    big data and remote work
    Data Helps Speech-Language Pathologists Deliver Better Results
    6 Min Read
    data driven insights
    How Data-Driven Insights Are Addressing Gaps in Patient Communication and Equity
    8 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Six Telltale Signs of IT Failure
Share
Notification
Font ResizerAa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Uncategorized > Six Telltale Signs of IT Failure
Uncategorized

Six Telltale Signs of IT Failure

JillDyche
JillDyche
6 Min Read
SHARE
Shovel by lanchongzi via Flickr

We see high-functioning IT organizations that manage their pipelines according to weighted prioritization frameworks that account for business value, available data, and consensus of need. They manage their assets proactively and apply the right skills. They know how to talk to business people.

All this sounds like standard operating procedure, right? Not so fast. There are IT organizations that wait for the business to engage, assign resources haphazardly and without forethought, fail to scope work, and use jargon so thick it would clog your arteries if you drank it. The well-worn adage is that if you look up and you see that you’re in a hole, stop digging. If there are tools of the trade for IT mediocrity, these six are the shovels:

  1. The CIO is all about keeping the lights on. There have been some high-profile decisions in the last several years—News Corp and Harrah’s come to mind—of companies deciding not to replace their former CIOs. The implication is that these guys simply keep the machines humming, right? Show me a company that measures its IT leadership by system uptime and I’ll show you a bunch of unhappy IT employees. Or a company that’s increasingly …

More Read

What if online business model innovation is slowing down?
Big Data for Personal Use Is More Popular Than Ever
Denial of access explained
C-Suite Tweets
May 2009 Early Indications: Clouded Over
Shovel by lanchongzi via Flickr

We see high-functioning IT organizations that manage their pipelines according to weighted prioritization frameworks that account for business value, available data, and consensus of need. They manage their assets proactively and apply the right skills. They know how to talk to business people.

All this sounds like standard operating procedure, right? Not so fast. There are IT organizations that wait for the business to engage, assign resources haphazardly and without forethought, fail to scope work, and use jargon so thick it would clog your arteries if you drank it. The well-worn adage is that if you look up and you see that you’re in a hole, stop digging. If there are tools of the trade for IT mediocrity, these six are the shovels:

  1. The CIO is all about keeping the lights on. There have been some high-profile decisions in the last several years—News Corp and Harrah’s come to mind—of companies deciding not to replace their former CIOs. The implication is that these guys simply keep the machines humming, right? Show me a company that measures its IT leadership by system uptime and I’ll show you a bunch of unhappy IT employees. Or a company that’s increasingly offshoring core skills.
  2. IT is viewed—and run—as a resource pool. One client recently tried to explain to me how its BI team members were also responsible for delivering on non-BI projects. Uh oh. Spreading resources too thin risks blurring the lines between projects, rendering completion vague and inchoate.
  3. IT management tries to squelch information or suppress feedback. A data warehouse manager recently sidled up to me after an executive readout and said, “Thanks for not throwing us under the bus.” We wouldn’t have—the data warehouse while immature wasn’t a showstopper—but he thought it might be. The point is that he attended the readout anyway. Many IT managers instead choose to circle the wagons, not participating in open forums that might result in reprioritized work tasks or suggested improvements. Worse, they’ll actively spread negative buzz about a new project or the group that’s leading it. That giant sucking sound? It’s the competition hiring your best people away and leaving you with the paranoid jerks.
  4. Lack of business-IT alignment. More specifically, the business won’t consult IT before commissioning outside vendors. It’s an erosion of confidence and trust. Despite our nudging, a media company’s marketing department refused to engage IT before building a CRM solution. Finally ceding to our pressure, marketing agreed to put the internal IT organization on its vendor list. IT had to respond to the RFP on equal footing with the CRM vendors vying for the work.
  5. No closed-loop success measurement. Perfunctory costing worksheets hastily completed and subsequently forgotten are far more pervasive in IT organizations than aligning IT projects with business priorities. So what is success, anyway, and how do we measure it? We wrote ten thousand lines of code. Our data warehouse has 700 tables, and 450 of them contain over 10 million rows. We’re up to twelve terabytes. And yes, we’re ignoring you.
  6. No repeatable rules-of-engagement. You simply cannot gather sustained business requirements by leaning in someone’s cubicle doorway dizzily scribbling into your Moleskine pad. Nor can you represent clear business needs by asking someone what data elements they want, or replicating their Excel spreadsheets in the BI tool-du-jour.

Here’s another indicator we’re seeing more often: if someone who works in your company won the lottery, would losing them put you in deep doo? If so, get a shovel and start digging.


photo by lanchongzi via Flickr (Creative Commons License)

Link to original post

Share This Article
Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

data analytics and truck accident claims
How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
predictive analytics for interior designers
Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
Analytics Exclusive Predictive Analytics
big data and cybercrime
Stopping Lateral Movement in a Data-Heavy, Edge-First World
Big Data Exclusive
AI and data mining
What the Rise of AI Web Scrapers Means for Data Teams
Artificial Intelligence Big Data Exclusive

Stay Connected

1.2kFollowersLike
33.7kFollowersFollow
222FollowersPin

You Might also Like

The Three Musketeers of Data Quality

6 Min Read

Are Spammers Taking Over Twitter?

3 Min Read

Enhancing Security and Functionality At The Same Time

3 Min Read

How Do Your Tweets Measure Up? (NSFW)

1 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

ai is improving the safety of cars
From Bolts to Bots: How AI Is Fortifying the Automotive Industry
Artificial Intelligence
data-driven web design
5 Great Tips for Using Data Analytics for Website UX
Big Data

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?