*Editor's Note: This is a book excerpt from "The Technology Garden: Cultivating
Sustainable IT-Business Alignment," by Jon Collins, Neil Macehiter, Dale
Vile and Neil Ward-Dutton and published by Wiley and Sons. Purchase
the book here.
When Nicholas Carr posited "IT doesn't matter" in 2003, he was making
the point that current technologies are commoditising and therefore available
to all. While this might be true, it is dependent on everything working correctly.
There is another side to IT however; in many organisations, IT is more a bottleneck
than a strategic tool, as layer upon layer of complex legacy has resulted in
environments that restrict, rather than enable business activities. This leads
to the question - if IT isn't actually helping the business, what exactly is
it there for?
While the 'what' of IT may be a commodity, the 'how' of it, specifically how
it supports and sustains business activities and functions, absolutely is not.
The killer is that business value can only come through the orchestration of
whole ecosystems of technologies and service providers. As these become more
and more complex, the focus needs to move away from the "what" and
towards the "how".
It is this emphasis, towards a sustainable model for technology delivery that
considers the whole ecosystem of business and IT, and which works across the
value chain incorporating technology suppliers, systems integrators, outsourcing
and service provision, that led us to the central themes for our new book. Traditionally,
technology funding separates projects from maintenance by an iron curtain: once
a project is complete, there is little consideration how to fund necessary enhancements
to ensure it delivers the necessary value. The assumption is that, once complete,
deployed technologies will need only minor tinkering.
This assumption is fundamentally flawed. There has been much talk in technology
circles about considering large scale technology projects is the same way as
construction projects - building bridges or cathedrals, for example. While there
is plenty to be gained from such parallels, the two paradigms diverge quite
fundamentally once the project is complete. Apart from the ongoing checks that
all is in order and the occasional coat of paint, a bridge is fixed in time
as a monument to its builders, whereas for IT projects, the journey is only
just beginning.
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