Think slow. Execute fast. Enjoy the success.
according2jb.com
Challenges
Unmanaged complexity destroys IT investment value.
Some companies leave huge amounts of value on the table when information technology investment decision making is superficial or slipshod. Teams chartered with building a business case for IT investment overlook or avoid some very hard questions that might have made the difference in the creation of much greater value over the lifecycle of the technology.
These pathologies are dressed in many guises, as this page explains. The outcomes are similar. Cost overruns, security breaches, dashed expectations, low morale, loss of organizational credibility with senior management and, most catastrophically, technology abandonment.
Decision making where IT investment is concerned is as nuanced and complex as it has ever been, composed of many moving, interdependent parts. Buyer beware.
Common value-destroying decision pathologies wrought by IT complexity
Investment decision pathologies
Potential Severity of negative impact
Scope creep during project execution
Midstream business requirement changes
Lack of rigor in the financial analysis
Incomplete analysis of change before and after
Highest Paid Person in the Room distorts objective facts
Poor governance - decision rights not clearly defined
Decision bias distorts objective decisions based on facts
Inadequate cybersecurity assessment and planning
End users overlooked in planning and decision making
Poor working relationship between IT and business: IT - business a clueless about complexity. Business - IT Dr. No, it never says yes
Table results are a mix of qualitative and quantitative data points collected over the past 20 years
x
A constant desire to unlock IT value in an increasingly complex business environment
a
Employees are fatigued by change and cynical at the same time when they have no real voice in the selection of new IT they will be expected to succeed with. The end user community collectively deserves a board-level seat with both opinion rights and decision rights. End users’ business process tribal knowledge is vast. Motivating users is complex.
a
Everyone acknowledges the importance of a trusting, collaborative relationship between the IT department and the rest of the business. Unfortunately these marriages are often made a few stratospheres below heaven.
IT thinks the business side is unappreciative of how complex IT truly is and the business calls IT Dr. No because when it comes to new tech, IT never says yes. Shadow IT is another manifestation of this complex relationship.
Senior management must make the IT-business relationship a high priority where it needs fixing.
a
The enterprise is searching for an effective, structured methodology to explore technology and determine its strategic promise before committing a large block of time and people effort to building a formal business case. AI is the latest candidate for such an exploratory and it is very complex technology promising enormous value.
a
One very large insurance company told according2jb.com that its IT department is terrified of making any changes to a large, legacy system of record for fear of making the application inoperable. Technical debt doesn’t get any worse.
Technical debt complexity remains a major headache in some enterprises. The only answer is, going forward, to commit to best practices in application development and a commitment to on going technical debt retirement.
a
Vendor selection has become a brutal multi-week marathon that organizations are desperate to streamline without losing the decision quality to make the right vendor choices.
Additionally, even in the face of sophisticated selection capabilities the decision process is binary: yes or no.
Companies would do well to hear the details of vendor capabilities and what unique contributions it can make to the business. Vendor contributions to value promises to be richer. But selection becomes more complex.
a
Speaking of technical debt, systemic complexity in sprawling IT estates requires a very holistic view of IT investment. Just consider the number of APIs you expose and the number of APIs you write hooks into.
In becoming the API economy exponentially more technical interdependencies exist. When investing in new technology the entire landscape of technical interdependencies must be factored into planning and decision making.
Interdependencies in business processes can also extend impacts [sometimes in a good way] beyond one department. How do new business process impact other processes from both a technical and business value perspective?
