Discussion on:

Get drastic: 15 IT best practices to kill

What am I missing on this point? Abandon level 1, 2 and 3 tech support? I can't agree or disagree without the elevator speech on this one.

elevator pitch: do you want to be customer focused, get rid of IT level 1,2,3 support ...
once allocated, an IT technician will solve your business problem ...

So, do I pay a team specialists to change user passwords or are the 1st, 2nd and 3rd line still there but invisible to the customer? ...and where are all these extra specialists going to come from?

... and how much more will it cost the company?

IMO Unless you level out support, you will get someone over and over fixing up a lost password; this is silly .. but levelled out, you might actually someone who thinks a bit longer, and should realize 'we get lots of these, why don't I create a secret question password reset', or the like. The next thing that will happen, is your team will actually learn more .. they have to deal with it, have to grow their skills - even if this is to suck it in, and ask. someone else for help.

And to add fuel to the fire, not just get rid of levels 1-3 and make it flat, but enforce double-jacking to get managers on the floor once a month, to see what it is really like. Let them do some calls, and see if they have resourced the support staff levels properly, see if the phones and PCs are sufficient, instead of ivory towers..

Wait... Am I suppose to eliminate abandoning... or simply abandon. The title says these are 15 things I'm suppose to eliminate, right? Can I suggest abandoning presentations with unclear call to actions?

I agree. So to spell this out, I need to:
1. Eliminate my efforts to "Reject annual mismatch between CEO priorities and IT???s most funded projects"
2.Eliminate my efforts to "Terminate support of projects that will not improve the income statement"
3. Eliminate my efforts to "Abandon CIO priorities that do not directly support CEO priorities"
4. Eliminate my efforts to "Stop recommending IT mega projects"
5. Eliminate my efforts to "Abolish environment of little or no IT spending accountability"
6. Eliminate my efforts to "Terminate existing applications that do not yield measurable business value"
7. Eliminate my efforts to "End the practice of placing enterprise IT spending within the CIO???s budget"
8. Eliminate my efforts to "Eliminate IT-caused business model disruption ???surprises???
9. Eliminate my efforts to "Eradicate ???cloud-a-phobia???
10. Eliminate my efforts to "Abandon level 1, 2, and 3 tech support"
11. Eliminate my efforts to "Cancel most IT chargeback systems"
12. Eliminate my efforts to "Cease issuing most competitive bids"
13. Eliminate my efforts to "Stop holding on to unfunded projects"
14. Eliminate my efforts to "End discrimination against behavioral skills and social sciences"
15. Eliminate my efforts to "Abandon IT???s unbalanced support between front and back office"

My favorite is number 8 - I can stop caring about outages. With the free time, I can help improve the bottom line some other way. Or I can use it to plan my disruptions so they're not a surprise!. Anyone have a good strategy to educate my internal customers...

We're a small IT department and the single biggest problem I have is users interrupting my train of concentration on a curly fault with a request to find the "Any" key.

That third level is specialists and there's some degree of isolation for a reason - being able to get things done.

Larger outfits with separate developer and helldesk pools would probably benefit from combining 'em and/or improving cross-pool communications but once you exceed a couple hundred staff there's a definite need to have a first line. The problem comes when the first line is hard to get past.

Usually, I just dismiss Gartner stuff out of hand, and the kind of junk that someone who spends all day talking to CXOs and never once did a day of honest work in the trenches comes up with. And almost always, that's an accurate assessment of Gartner. In this case, though, their analysis is surprisingly dead on. The problem is, getting from Point A to Point B is very difficult. These are cultural issues ingrained into most enterprises, and they aren't going away any time soon.

J.Ja

So much of this is off the mark, I must disagree with your comment

Items 1,2,3 of the `manifesto` would be a given in any enterprise. Item 4, is pap, as most incentives are already baked in. The incentive picked for next year, was a multiyear project with a 80% certainty of being completed in the target year.

#6 define that one. It could apply to anything.
#1,3,8 like duh.
#2 is a subtle joke. Most IT shops are a cost center in the enterprise. IT shops improve bottom line by reducing the expense line.
#7 is in conflict with #5. One of the sole powers that a CIO has is the ability to terminate funding.
#12 does not fit a reality of many businesses that are required by law to do so from regulatory bodies. And in the present American enterprise of any size that means darn near everyone.
Finally, like always, Gartner is thinking in terms that the IT shop is in total control of its environment. The reality is few if any shops are. I can take you to enterprises where the spending for IT related items/projects are as big as the IT shop itself.

If Gartner wanted to add value then they ought to define how most IT shops being a cost center are transformed into revenue generators so that they end up on the left side of the ledger. They won't of course, because they don't know how and never have. Gartner has long outlived its usefulness in being a guiding light. They have been stating the obvious for over a decade.

#2, 6 and 13: What if an application is used to increase worker productivity and the powers-that-be cannot be convinced of its value to the company or its "value" cannot be tied directly to an income statement. The reasons for most of the "15 practices to eliminate" are subjective and metrics cannot find the overall value to the enterprise. Also, who decides what has value?


#4: Could be a real problem if a "mega-project" is needed to re-vamp an old system or comply with a change in state or federal law.

#8: What is this supposed to mean? It's impossible to stop something unexpected.

#9: Not everyone needs to used the cloud.

#10: This would never work. Farming out tech support would cost much more in the long run, not to mention a frustration workers who would need to call half way across the world to report a system outage.

Abandon level 1, 2, and 3 tech support

Are you serious? explain how that is going to work in an enterprise environment?
who will provide help desk support? and who will provide the extended support needed when help desk have done all that they can?

I work in an enterprise environment of over 1500 employees.
Tell me who is going to deploy the deskphones and workstations when we have a new starter? who is going to talk to the employee about there issue and make them feel like someone is investing his or her time in the issue?

All this is doing is reinforcing that stigma the "IT Department" as always and and can never shake.

Think about what the end user also needs and not just go about cutting costs.

It is difficult enough to just get staff to do what we ask them to when trying to fix their IT issues.
Support jobs is being played down here as if it is so easy to do the job.
I like to see staff do IT support work...would you let a plumber do your electricity?

The setup may result in a very nice conduit install to run the electrical through. (I might have an electrition check over the wire connections after though of course..)

The result would be the electrician telling you that nothing is up to code, the entire thing needs to be pulled out and redone from scratch.

I worked for an enterprise company. In fact, I worked support for an IT software development group ... the people who design and write these great applications.

The Palm V had been approved for corporate use.

I spent more time installing Palms (PC software/sync) for these *DEVELOPERS* who couldn't make sense of the tri-fold pictured "read me first". And you want to discard support? Productivity would come to a crawl. Good luck making that bottom line.

SUPPORT IS A VALUE ADDED SERVICE, IT IS NOT JUST A COST. Many companies fail to grasp the importance of their support organizations in keeping customers around. End support, bye bye customers.

I agree that support is always an issue when budgets are reviewed. With cost-cutting we could only deploy Level 1 support which ends up putting pressure on the developers themselves and ultimately disrupting development which I was responsible for. I jumped in and managed all issues requiring Level 3 support but Level 1 always ends up being overwhelmed with nowhere to funnel all the issues requiring expert knowledge without giving additional training (and incurring additional costs) to the Level 1 support members which lands us back at square 1.

End-users support is always a "must" in my book because this yields the greatest return with immediate value for the client and needs to be re-thinked in terms of budgets and short-and-long term goals.

Some of this seems common sense, but I'm interested in the alternative proposed to level 1-3 systems. I'm from the trenches myself and have worked all 3 positions, and understand the basic concepts of ITIL.

From a HR/Money perspective, I am wondering how you merge level 1 and 3 without paying everyone at a level 3 rate. Typically these teams are pyramid shaped, with the very best being less numerous than the guys whose support is 80% "did you type your password correctly? Is it plugged in?".
Presently I work a role where all 3 are merged, but that is only viable when there are less than a few hundred individuals.
Then there is the matter of training. It is normal to train a level 3 staff member at great expense so that they are an expert with the enterprise vendor's solutions. Training every single staff member, or picking some staff over others, or creating a series of weak points (I know CISCO, but not Juniper and I need both to fix this!) doesn't seem cheap.

Yes, but, limiting a capable Tier Two from doing a "fix" merely because they are a Tier Two, but, otherwise capable is ludicrous, too.

Example, I a power user, have an issue with a security related app, it's not working. A Tier Two has Registry Access rights, but, has niether authority nor Install Source Access to fix the bug,

That has to go to a Tier Three... Or higher?

It's not always a pay issue... IT comes back to IT Security Paranoia needlessly segregating functionality because of a lack of trust.

If you can't trust your people get rid of them!

A few you can trust, at a higher pay level, is worth dozens you can't at any pay level!

....for sure. Sometimes security measures make sense, sometimes it's simply intentionally complicating things for the sake of egos. (Gotta have lots of tiers so I can have lots of staff.....build my empire.)

And honestly, that desire for power is the biggest obstacle of all for any improvement, regardless of what people think should be done, or even what we all agree should be done.

It looks inefficient, and can be. I've seen what happens when managers try to get rid of a peak/trough system. The troughs become flat peaks and the peaks become overtime. When you have multiple staff with the same job titles and similar pay, but wildly different work expectations based on their qualifications it leads to skill loss and poor morale. Plus overtime (when you have to replace them).

I realise I'm talking about what you might think of as the little day to day stuff, but bullet points need to be expanded at some point into policy. That is where dead projects and bloated systems come from. ITIL like system developed from a need. I meet a lot of people in I.T now who have pretty average technology skills. That wasn't possible before seperating the tiers. Skilled I.T people will always flee boring unchallenging tasks that underpay because they're being paid alongside those who are just entering the industry. Merging the tiers is like asking the CEO to do the work he hired others to do. Chances are, he can do it- he probably built the company afterall. Doesn't mean its a good way to use him.

All of that said, I like decentralising I.T. Usually there is a "tier 0"..someone amongst a team or department who isn't of I.T but experienced enough in the use of their business systems that they can assist their colleagues and escalated as needed- with the information in a format that makes I.T's response more accurate.

Your last point is very well taken, In a research study of IT help issues that my students and I did a few years back, we found that (a) probably close to all the "help" provided to organizational users was provided by fellow workers, either in their immediate area or nearby; (b) the quality of this help was rated as at least as good as that provided by IT help; (c) this was related to greater importance attached to familiarity with the work being done than to technology expertise; (d) almost all of this help was provided informally, usually without official acknowledgement or reward, simply because people like helping other people; and (e) where official attention was paid, it was more likely to be in the form of reproach rather than thanks, despite the fact that if all the burden of the informal help system were to be transferred to official IT help channels, the official system would swiftly collapse. The capacity of organizations to punish their people for undertaking the kind of organizational good citizenship behaviors that keep them afloat is endlessly amazing, no less in IT than in any other area of corporate activity.

So, it's all the "Bottom Line"?

Well, if there are no IT users... There would be no need for IT providers.

I agree the bottom line is important, because without a company IT users wouldn't have a job...

But, how about looking at things to "Kill" that impede the users productivity and creativity, when it supports the company?

How about "maiming" those IT protocols that impede keeping creative people on the payroll by making them so frustrated with IT services and uselesss IT hoops to jump through.

Malicious Users should be fired... Period... Untrainable/Unteachable IT users should also be fired.

Primary Log-In access rights should be tailored to the users function in the company not some IT security Paranoiacs One Size Fits All and no users can be trusted attitude.

Lastly, don't trust the cloud, if you don't "own" it... You don't control it...

And, pyhsical security is still the best security available.

Also if your internet connection goes down so does the cloud. Can your business stop just because the internet does?

Businesses exist to make money, companies which are quoted in the stock market exist to create value for their shareholders. I have long held the view that IT should either be facilitating the making of money or the cutting of costs in order to effect the bottom line. The problem is IT often gets too focused on technology, the most fundamental conflict in all phases of the ITSM Lifecycle is between the view of IT as a set of IT services (the external business view) and the view of IT as a set of technology components (internal IT view). The bottom line is - ???People do not want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.???
However to this I would now add compliance as another fundamental focus for IT, certainly in the finance environment, Federal and SOX compliance are critical.

Businesses exist to make money by selling something of value. Ignore your customers at your peril. IT provides value for budget invested in it. Try running a business without it. IT has recognized that it's a service for a very long time now. You need quarter inch drills to make those quarter inch holes.

Brilliant idea to abandon them. They should never form part of the IT budget. If a user needs support it should be 'purchased as a service'. In theory the individual IT support people could still be there, but responding only when support services have been purchased. A line manager is going to get people to buck up quickly when the same user over and over costs the department ??15-??20 a time to have their password changed. In the same vein, if there is a real issue with software that is persistently cropping up, your IT issue will be flagged up faster if someone is paying for issues to be resolved that aren't their problem.

Since you seem very cloud centred, (option 9 ), and I feel that 9 and 10 go hand in hand. I can see you would want the death of the IT department. With users knowing more and more about basic functionality on their systems, and IT stuff in general resetting passwords will become more rare. Level 1 will be replaced by machines that can re image themselves, and restore to previous point becoming the norm for issues. Lifting boxes of new PCs, replacing HDDs, etc can be done by vendors.
To close down Level 2-3 would require more secure SLAs and SaaS being more than it is right now.
14. End discrimination against behavioral skills and social sciences. LoL, never, I enjoy oppressing my users.

"users knowing more and more about basic functionality on their systems" - excuse please the tears of mirth. Users are and will remain clueless, say what you like. For every one who "knows more" there are a hundred who have the know-how of a potato.

Can do a lot of harm. I've had users ask me to put in my admin credentials and complained that it was necessary at all.
Sure, I might spend less time explaining how a desktop works, but I spend as much time explaining why its bad to establish a vpn to someone's home PC. If anything, 'savvy' users are just as unhappy with business computers as the unsavvy were with the devil machines. Its just the reasons that change.

They always say that entropy tends towards chaos naturally.
These ideas will certainly speed it up.

just curious how all this applies to not for profit systems such as healthcare or community service organizations, libraries, government agencies.
I understand CIOs and CEOs should always work to improve the financial situation of the entity, but where is the line between profitability and purpose ?
this reminds me somewhat of ancient Mesopotamia,
greed and the lack of investment in a sustainable future turned the rich fertile crescent into a desert.
So the stock holders are not making record profits,guess we better bleed what we can out of it until the whole thing crumbles to dust.....
My parents who made it through the great depression - profit is not always the most rewarding goal.

1,5,6,11,12,13 All make sense. They help streamline what we do. Number 5 would be so welcome. Why do management pay a consultant $50k typically for something one of their senior IT staff could answer. 15 Seems to contradict 10, and speaking of eliminating Level 1 - 3 Support, I wonder how this guy and CIO's, or even Director's would cope if their level 1 - 3 support were cut, meaning all their middle management. They would either have to deal with every little detail of every project, application, and Infrastructure architecture, design, implementation, support, and staffing issues or empower the employees to make their own decisions about how the CIO's and CEO's direction should be carried out. Come to think of it, this may not be a bad idea. Imagine the business savings if all the middle management and upper management positions were eliminated, and bonuses saved. We may be finally heard if we just have to listen to each other.

Improve the financial conditions of an enterprise? Eliminate manifesto #4. Weren't they hired to do that?

I love the way "enlightened thinkers" set policy with slogans and bullet points. If one good slogan could cure our problems, we'd be free of all burdens by now by applying the proper amounts of "Hope and Change". If one good bullet list could solve our problems, Gartner would have cured the world's ills a thousand times over.

The truth is that things in "IT" are the way they are because they have organically developed to meet the needs of everyday life. Yet there are those who want to put IT into a box. At one extreme are those that think the box is "Expense - the necessary evil" at the other extreme are those who think the box is "Income - IT needs to produce revenue". No one who acts as a CxO consultant seems to grasp the idea that it's both, and more than both because "IT" has become the catch-all for things that no one else can, or knows how to, or can be trusted, to do.

The first step in "fixing IT" is to do a needs analysis. As many have already questioned, what about the user? What about setups? Training? There is a need for all of these. Plan accordingly and budget accordingly to meet them.

There is also a need for process improvement in various levels of the administrative functions in both for-profit and non-profit companies. PROPER application of technology to actually improve the process increases efficiency of those functions and saves the company money.

There is also the need for constant analysis of the profit and pitfalls for a company to adopt any new technology or hold on to old technology. A Dell approach is the right approach for most companies - don't be too quick to jump on the bandwagon for any technology, let others suffer with the teething and growing pains, when it's clear what benefit can be derived be ready to adopt (at which time there will be more true experts with the technology to assist with more comptetitive rates).

Too often CxOs practice what I call "management by magazine". They read an article, maybe one that touts a (distant) competitor employing some great new technology to their benefit. Articles, like mainstream media, are not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They are adulterated pieces designed to air the opinion of the writer, or the publishing company they work for, or the advertiser/investor who supports them. The CIO position can't afford to fall into that trap. It must not be shoehorned into it by yet another "consultant", speaker, journalist or powerpoint presenter.

Not enough room for the rest of the soapbox - but as an IT manager who has seen it go from the guys in the backroom who do the magic with the big systems that finance uses, to adding it to all levels of manufacturing, warehousing, and supply, to supporting every function and every person in the company who has an electronic device that generates, transfers, or uses information, I can tell you it's not something that can be decided in the boardroom as a line item on the company P&L.

Very well said.

Your comment here:

Too often CxOs practice what I call "management by magazine".

...is in line with my comment about "CEO-centric" direction of IT. I know this type, most of the CEOs I have worked with based their decisions on the "everyone else is doing it that way" principle.

# Abandon CIO priorities that do not directly support CEO priorities

CIOs are stupid and just want to do their own thing. CEOs all excel at their jobs and have never caused trouble for any business, right? (And not just with respect to IT.) Things were going so swimmingly through the '70s, but the IT monster was growing and destroying everything.

Hint: Business created IT. Each business creates its own IT department.

Have any of you checked out what "CEO priorities" usually sound like?
"Achieve excellence in the field of excellence" isn't directly supported by any IT function. So, the bottom line, if the CEO uses corporate NewSpeak, the IT department should stop what they're doing and start a religion based on it.

How else to directly support internal-marketing-heavy phrases from on high?

Management by Magazine.. that's great, it's absolutely right too!

The problem s that "IT" is measured by how much we spend compared to how much we saved the company because you can't measure what we save a company but trolling vendors for hardware procurement and stopping a major issue with downtime due to maybe and update you tested before deployment. See IT has many unnoticeable wins for their employers but they don't see that the money they spent on a piece of software or hardware that prevented catastrophe. What they see is a tangible expense that they can cut at their leisure because they spent a lot of money on their business trips and their spa treatments. Middle management is a waste of money cut that and let the CO's actually listen to the employees and not management to see whats wrong with their company because I know for sure its not the IT department we are the ones who keep you functioning as a productive business along with the employee, middle management is not the catalyst of a company that's for sure.

While this sounds good, it can take some "translation". My CEO has never had a priority that was more specific than "be an industry leader" and "win industry mindshare". Add to that the fact that he canceled the budget items for new firewalls because, and I quote, "we don't need those. the users have passwords don't they?" and you begin to see the problem. No, I'm not kidding.

Abandon level 1, 2 and 3 tech support? IT has enough problems with it's image without abandoning the end users! Who will do all the mundain - but necessary tasks - like deploying computers for new employees, resetting passwords, providing telephone assistance to staff and others?

"Cloud-a-phobia" sounds like another glib catch-phrase. We can't use the cloud because legislation prevents us from using services outside our organisation unless we can guarantee personal data will not leave Canada. Unless a provider can guarantee data will not cross the border, we cannot use the "Cloud". In addition, the legal ramifications of who owns what and can see the data has not been entirely worked out.

"5.Abolish environment of little or no IT spending accountability" I do not know where Jason may have worked, but we have to justify everything we do and spend. We have a corporate governance structure which we must operate within, additionally there is a set of rules we must follow before spending money.

It is my impression that "abandon Tier 1, 2, 3" was meant to say to abandon the tier structure, When a problem comes in, the tech should be able to deal with it without having the end user go through 2, 3 4, or more people to finally get to someone who can actually fix the problem.

I hadn't thought of it that way, I assumed it was more like "for stupid/simple problems the end user is on their own." But what you say makes more sense.

If a software engineer picks up the phone and it's an accountant with a printer problem, the engineer would normally say "that's not my job." (no doubt thinking "that's beneath me")

Perhaps the author means everyone should wear whatever hat is needed, given any problem related to IT. Like you said; no more passing the user through multiple help desks with differing specific tasks.

If that's the case, I can see larger organizations facing higher turnover in IT, running a policy like that.

I understand this point to mean that if you DESIGN and PROPERLY STAFF your tech support center, there will not be need for the tier level. The support center will have on hand subject matter experts to handle all types of support requests......users logon issues, application issues, network problems, database issues and so on.

This is why TechRepublic can be such a valuable resource, because smart people show up and write clear-headed responses to important topics.

Keep it coming... I'm considering turning some of the best comments into a follow-up article.

No matter which way you swing, sensibilities get cut. Best or worst of all, your own.

I'd like to see one on the 'service desk levels' issue, especially if we could find out what McGee envisions replacing it.

There is confusion on this point, just above there are a few differing views on what is meant by "abandon(ing) support levels 1, 2 and 3."

Is it 'every person can handle every problem,' or is it some kind of reorganization? Of all the bullet points this one seems to have generated the most confusion. It'd be nice to have the point explained by it's author.

Gartner has excelled at making companies believe that Gartner has the secret ingredient. They mix in some things we all know with some "shocking revelations". There is no "rubber to the road" connection, just an all-powerful Wizard who is really a man behind a curtain.

Sounds like we just need to add a few marketing types to the round table. Hey wait that's me. Gotta go... IT may be developing complex solutions to simple problems without me!

I agree with your "Gartner filter," pandering to the perspective of the CEO is a good way to stay in business. (make yourself 'relevant')

Problem is you need good CEOs if you're going to drive IT from that perspective.

Fredrick Smith at FedEx and Mike Ward at CSX are two good examples of a CEO that doesn't have a knee-jerk distrust of IT. I'm not sure how universal that kind of mindset is in this short-term bottom line climate.

I like many of the suggestions for IT Best Practices to Kill. I wish my company could eradicate many of these things. I agree with changing the way IT support is structured, I think the 1-2-3 system is outmoded and predicated on end users with no knowledge of the systems they use on a daily basis and upper management who are not detail oriented. It would be a better use of money to train end users to use their systems to reduce the amount of calls a level 1 support would get. Unfortunately where I work the are determined to create more and more middle managers based on this 1-2-3 model. As for point 2 I also wish this could be implemented, to stay viable this will have to be a long term focus. Overall I think the points are sound IT does need a fresh focus for the future.

I think that there is a serious issue here the IT Admins are being targeted here where as the business part of the IT world is supposed to be handled by the IT director which hands down the IT Admin's agenda. Now we are to have the business hat too and this 1,2,3 level support is ridiculous scrap it then pay the IT Admin's more to wear the extra hat get rid of the IT director chair and make IT Admins go get business degrees come on don't we ware enough hats. Levels of support are needed because when you spread a position too thin and the pay is sh@t, you will never get your company into the position to get anywhere close to where your competitors are and you will lose business. What is missing here is the fact that IT Admins as a job is to make the business function run smoothly and provide solutions that you the user and company customers can get online without getting your network hacked and you can use your ERP systems with ease and do all your little meetings with slide shows across the world wide corporation. The IT Admins job is to keep the business end running not help its bottom line and the main reason the projects are stagnant is because no one wants to grab their balls and make a business decision on whether IT is worth spending on or not so they leave us floating until something breaks by then it???s too late the company would of saved lots of money if they would of listened in the first place now they have down time which is more costly than the actual fix which is most likely sitting on the IT directors inbox because he may not have the stones to go directly to his boss with the expense.
I won???t rant any longer I will just say is if technology changes every two years and your company is still running technology that is no longer supported by the manufacturer you are losing money. The old tech theory is irrelevant you know those guys that made the systems and made the network and created the apps are the ones who are costing the companies money with their ???if it isn???t broke don???t fix it and if it breaks he is the only one who can make it work again???. Address that issue! When we should be keeping up with the technology cycling systems every 3 to 4 years updating software and hardware keeping up with the support that???s where IT Admins save the company money so you don???t crash and burn. IT is always in the mindset of business if we could we would have your network moving smooth, your applications doing its job without issue, your servers at the five 9 theory, but no one wants to pay for it they rather blame us and subtract from our department. You see it as Business as usual by taking away resources from the IT department we see it as one less building block for your company. We are forced to keep old hardware and run outdated applications and forced to jerry rig your network because business as usual. My final statement why doesn???t anyone stand up for the IT department is it because we are supplemental because you see our budget and just want to throw pennies at it instead why don???t you guys take a stand for IT and say lets push toward newer technology and for god sake get your balls back and make a business decision and move your IT departments into the latest technology era.

It is a misnomer to think that losing internet eliminates the cloud. We user an edge server that uses a vpn to a data storehouse. The edge server provides the database we need and the cloud is a redundant part of the package. If our edgeserver goes down, we can use remote sessions to connect directly to the server farm, that is when internet connectivyt would be an issue

Widen your perspective beyond the computer and software network. This article is saying that IT is not just keeping the "trains running". It's about where do we need to lay new track, how should the trains run to make more money, and which old spur lines need to be shut down or rebuilt to save money.

Innovate or perish. Innovation is not make just make it run smoother, faster and more secure. Innovation is adapting the technology to the new ways of doing business.

Leave it to Gartner to lead from behind and act as if this is revolutionary. Most of these have been circulating for at least a few years.

Levels 1, 2, & 3 service is going away in most customers I work with as part of bring-your-own-PC. So nothing new there.

Elminate cloud-ophobia? Really? Wow that is "drastic'.

I don't get elminating chargebacks though.

Thanks

Them clouds would turn into hurricane sometimes.

1. Assumes there???s a mismatch, or that a CEO???s priority projects will always require the most funding from IT.
2. Are we talking ???direct??? or ???indirect??? improvement here? Adding a backup server for your customer website won???t provide a direct improvement to your income statement???but you???ll appreciate having it when the primary server has a hiccup on Black Friday, & the only thing letting customers continue to place the orders is that backup server you were reluctant to buy.
3. I guess that depends on the CEO priorities, though. Remember, we live in a time when corporate leaders, not just the CEO, are being held accountable for the actions of their fellow leaders in the corporation. If the CIO feels that the CEO???s ???priorities??? are going to cause problems for the corporation ??? system disruptions, unnecessary employee workload increases, wasted budget expenditures on hardware/software that isn???t required or useful for the corporation ??? he has a responsibility to do more than just say, ???Yes, sir, right away, sir???. That???s why he???s the CIO, after all.

And that doesn???t even consider, of course, that a CEO of a mid-range to large corporation is going to be looking only at the very top level of business operations anyway. When it comes to IT systems, the CEO is going to be concerned about a) cost, b) time, and c) whether it works or not. He won???t care what brand the server motherboard shows on it, or whether it???s running Windows Server 2008 R2 or OpenVMS. He won???t care if the in-house applications require separate login screens & user IDs, or if they???re managed through a single log-on by the user when they turn their PC on. If he???s going to micromanage that much, then he shouldn???t have hired a CIO in the first place???or any of the junior & senior VPs that are supposed to be helping him run the company, either. That???s part of a CIO???s job, to manage both the responses to a CEO???s direct needs *and* to manage the ???behind-the-curtain??? processes & activities that help support the direct needs.
4. Again, depends on the project. Replacing a 30-year-old hardware & software legacy system is going to qualify as a ???mega-project???, but will still be ???mission-critical??? to the corporation???s continued survival & bottom line; dismissing it out of hand because it???s a mega-project just shows financial myopia on the CEO???s side.
5. There shouldn???t be any of this left, anyway. After all, we???ve kept hearing about IT budgets being slashed, & IT departments putting off new hardware/software acquisitions because of budget limitations. Hardly sounds like ???IT Guys Gone Wild??? or rampant spending to me.
6. Is this really that widespread in corporations? And what kind of apps with no ???measurable business value??? are we talking about here? Legacy apps that haven???t been updated yet, but IT hasn???t had the budget to replace ??? or been able to find qualified programmers for? Apps that access archival information that the corporation???s required to keep for actuarial or legal purposes? Apps that may have a publically-available counterpart, but were developed in-house so that the corporation could retain better control over future development of the app?
7. Then whose budget is it going to go under? Marketing? Product Engineering & Development? Financial & Accounting? Payroll? Human Resources? If they???re talking about keeping it under the general budget, or perhaps under some category like ???Capital Improvements??? or ???Infrastructure???, I could see that; otherwise, keep it as a subcategory for the budget allocated to the department that???s going to be spending the time & money researching, as well as installing & implementing, the systems that are going to be purchased. I wouldn???t expect the Human Resources department of Ford to have the final say on where to build a new factory site, or what systems & machines will be appropriate to install there; by the same token, I wouldn???t expect the Senior VP of Product Engineering at Ford to be the one having the final say on what their next set of corporation-wide network upgrades will entail.
8. Never going to happen. No system is currently 100% glitch-free, nor are any systems immune to, ???Well, that never came up in testing, & the users never said that they did *that* with the prior application??? situations. However, IT is far from the only department that can cause ???gotcha??? situations in a business (i.e.
9. Pure & utter FUD. If an IT department decides that ???the cloud??? isn???t an appropriate choice for their particular corporation, it doesn???t mean that they did it only because of ???fear of the cloud???; it just means that, for their needs & wants, the ???cloud??? option wasn???t as viable.
10. Abandon it? Are we talking about abandoning support for your customers ??? which, in their eyes, hiring some underpaid, 3rd-party firm (whether overseas or not) to handle it will qualify as abandonment? Or are we talking about abandoning support for your employees ??? you know, the ones actually performing the work that pays the CEO???s fat salary, stock options, & golden parachute plan that lets him abandon ship if the company falters? Either way
11. So, they want to hold IT departments more accountable for their budgets, but they don't want IT to hold the *other* departments accountable for their use of IT resources? I'm sensing a real disconnect here between reality & what Gartner wishes was reality.
12. Excuse me? Again, they want to enforce accountability on IT departments, but then turn around & say they don???t want them to issue bids? The clue-o-meter is reading zero right there.
13. Not really sure what they???re talking about here. If they???re not funded, then it doesn???t matter whether they???re ???holding onto them???, because they shouldn???t be costing the company any money. Now, if we???re talking about a CIO keeping employees working on a particular project that the board and/or CEO already rejected, that could be a situational thing. Sure, maybe the CIO is trying to keep the project going because it???s ???her baby???, & it fuels their ego/hero complex to be the one providing the solution???but then again, maybe they???re still not satisfied with the ???pie-in-the-sky??? projection the vendor sold to the board, & want to have a fallback ready to put in place in case everything falls through. Obviously, situation #1 is bad, & should be stopped???but situation #2 could save the company???s bacon, and shouldn???t be stopped.
14. I have no idea what they???re talking about here. Perhaps if they had some concrete examples of what they meant, we could understand their point & even respond to it.
15. See #14.

My takeaway on this? Gartner apparently has some vested interest in corporations getting rid of their IT departments???& especially in switching everything IT-related to ???the cloud???. Which is kind of like relying on a car salesman as your source for determining which car is going to be a better buy???

Is this from a CEO perspective who has had their fill of out-of-touch CIOs?

Or, is this from a CIO perspective who wants to transfer the responsibility (and blame) to the CEO or anyone besides themselves?

Take the existing 12 commandments of IT and rephrase them, duplicate a couple, and throw it back at us as if it were "News". What pisses me off is that I could run my entire IT department on what you get paid to waste my time like this.

Freaking Analysts. Anal-ist is right.

I have to comment on #6 (Terminate existing applications that do not yield measurable business value). It usually isn't IT that wants to hang on to applications of questionable value. My company supports dozens of applications of dubious value, because someone, somewhere in the business refuses to let go of it. It's nearly impossible to shut anything down because there is always someone on the business side with enough clout to keep the system running.

I remember when a guy could get fired for cutting the bloat and making things more efficient.

Like any CEO is gonna okay their sacred data -- often subject to various legal / security requirements -- going to some server on "the cloud"? And like they're gonna let the place shut down 'cause the local Dept of Public Works hit your fiber uplink?

The only times "the Cloud" makes sense is for those companies who stand to make money on it. It's a marketing slogan for Microsoft and Apple, as they seek greater ways to tie us to them in absolute iron bands.

Hi Jason,
I agree with the premise that IT needs to think of itself as a business catalyst and employ new innovative ideas/approaches to align with the overvall business strategy. But I disagree that Mr McGee's ideas are radical. Intel IT has been on a transformation path for the last three years, and making tremendous progress in delivering business value - whether helping increase sales with new lead-gen capabilities or saving money (and energy) with data center refresh.

The other thing that concerns me, is the list of 15 items as "best practices." Some of these are so obviously not best practices...why would anyone list as such? For example, "#5.Abolish environment of little or no IT spending accountability." Of course IT wants and implements spending accountability, just like any other business unit, whether a profit or cost center. And "eradicate cloud-a-phobia"...if one looks at the amount of products, services, and sheer volume of information on deploying private and public clouds, it is clear that most IT organizations are well past fear and embracing cloud solutions.

I'll finish with something you can pass to Mr. McGee - the url for Intel IT's Annual Performance Report. We are making great strides in creating business value, increasing IT efficiency, and solving customer problems. There are many examples. http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/general/Intel_IT_2011APR_English_standard.pdf

And for the others watching this thread. We are proud of Intel IT's best practices, and believe we all win by sharing innovative ideas. Check us out at: Intel.com/IT.

ElaineR, IT@Intelsme

Our chief (read: only, to all intents and purposes) electricity utility implemented all the cost-cutting recommendations in this manifesto, some 10 years ago.

The then board saw how to improve the bottom line dramatically and virtually instantly: eliminate maintenance and expansion.

The shareholders (the government) saw the huge positive cashflow and awarded the board huge bonuses.

The country is now paying the financial price, 25% per year electricity price increases for 4 years - having already paid the economic price, frequent rolling blackouts because the economy expanded way beyond power generation capacity.

We saw these answers years ago, you guys are sleeping. Get with the programme, implement your cuts now! Then by 2021, when Gartner is saying "in order to stay relevant, the IT department must implement mega-projects" you can ll nod sagely and say yes, Gartner knows what they are talking about, they talk to CEOs.

Based on gartners article, our company threw all of our computers out the windows. We are now using clay tablets to demand of our former customers, to pay us money to appease the cloud god. We don't waste any money at all on silly things like providing a service, we just demand money, or else...

creating an annual mismatch between CEO priorities and IT???s most funded projects a best practice or a goal of any sort?

The basic point - that IT has to stop thinking of itself as a business utility and start seeing itself as a business catalyst - is a good one. Of course, any bullet pointed list is bound to leave out most of the complexities.

> 2. Terminate support of projects that will not improve the income statement

What about projects that are required by law or regulation (SOx, PCI)? Projects that enable disaster recovery and improve business continuity? Projects that improve redundancy and resiliency of critical business systems? Projects that improve information security? Projects that enable better risk management?

> 7. End the practice of placing enterprise IT spending within the CIO???s budget

Who should manage IT spending if not the CIO?

> 8. Eliminate IT-caused business model disruption ???surprises???

Great idea. But wait - won't this require "projects that will not improve the income statement"?

> 9. Eradicate ???cloud-a-phobia???

I'm sure this means something to the author, but it means nothing to me. How about we just eradicate use of the buzzword "cloud", and start talking specifics?

> 10. Abandon level 1, 2, and 3 tech support

When users forget their passwords, or don't know how to connect to a printer, should we ignore them? Or should we escalate their issues to senior-level engineering staff? Would allocating expensive senior-level expertise to low-level, repetitive issues be time and money well-invested?

> 12. Cease issuing most competitive bids

Agreed. Then again, if we can't trust the CIO to manage IT spending, and we won't use competitive bids, just how do we make IT purchases?

> 13. Stop holding on to unfunded projects

Champions, give up. Creative thinkers, reign yourselves in. If we can't convince management a project should be funded today, let's just give up forever.

> 14. End discrimination against behavioral skills and social sciences

Again, I'm sure this means something to the author, but it means nothing to me. I am wondering, though, whether the author was a Psych major in college, and has some kind of axe to grind.

Thank you,
Jerry J. Anderson, CCIE #5000

I could not agree more with point 2 (Terminate support of projects that will not improve the income statement).

We are paying significant amounts of money for that internal backup system, and I don't even want to think about how many man hours have gone into maintaining and improving those firewalls. Yet neither have yielded us a single cent, ever.

Out of the window with them, I say!

I didn't know protection from theft was supposed to bring in money. How about we take away your firewalls and stop backups? Let's see how long your system stays up after that and then when some hacker has crashed your network and stole all of your accounting departments data along with the countless employees information you can look at your employees faces and say well we saved money... wait you will lose money because your accounts will be cleaned out and your customer and employee data will be sold to the highest bidder... You must be kidding not to mention you could of gotten your data back but you took away the backups so its a fresh new start for your company.
Honestly the dumbest Idea ever and not to mention your statement. Do you even work in IT. Have you ever restored a backup of had to setup a firewall? Do you even know what a firewall does? LOL... I would not want to work for your company it would not be safe and neither would your data, hell your next step would probably be take out fire extinguisher maintenance too that yields no income. I know lefts get rid of 5s too that never yielded a dime for any company...As a matter of fact cut the power off and to the world and lets go back to the stone age because that is where your company is headed.

I forgot the

It's always interesting to see someone venting his problems and desintrest in IT. I don't know Ken McGee but I do know a lot of "Ken McGee"-like figures. Putting a lot of own frustrations in the IT basket and not realizing that most of these frustrations come out of mismanaging a whole company, allowing departments to dictate how IT should work, forgetting that IT is working for other departments too. I agree with Mr Hiner: dive in the trenches for 15 years and we'll talk again. My reaction to such consultants and managers is: IT too expensive, complex, difficult? No problem, here's pen and paper. Have a nice day.

2. Terminate support of projects that will not improve the income statement
6. Terminate existing applications that do not yield measurable business value
No preventive maintenance?

8. Eliminate IT-caused business model disruption ???surprises???
Sounds like we've just guaranteed them.

I'm going to steer away from the 'Support Desk Levels', since that one has been getting plenty of attention already.

"14. End discrimination against behavioral skills and social sciences"

What are we talking about here? Within a corporation, who is practicing this discrimination, and who is being discriminated against?

Having seen CEOs who fear/misunderstand/underate technology and those who expect Star Trek technology, I would say that is very tough to have a balanced CIO game plan that coincides with the CEO's vision. Not impossible, but very difficult. I am a very simplistic person and still believe in KISS. Whatever gets it done is what needs to be done and if it is just bells and whistles it can be eliminated. Toys are great for kids but when you are an adult put the toys away. IMHO.

First: thank you, Jason. I agree with your assessment of Mr. McGee's intended message. (As a long-time "messenger" yourself, I'm sure you've gotten used to being "shot" so can dismiss those who respond here so inappropriately.)

While we could nitpick each point from our personal POV, I believe it's important to realize that there are important exceptions to each of Ken's recommendations. A specific point not resonating in one's environment doesn't negate the value of the overarching message nor the magnitude of the opportunities envisioned.

Gartner and Mr. McGee have done us the favor of challenging some core beliefs that plague the modern enterprise. Oh, that one doesn't apply to your team/dept/company? Move on to the next, rinse and repeat. You get a prize if NONE of them apply to your organization...or your previous employer...or your next.

Once our knee-jerk reactions have subsided, I hope each of us can take a step back and look for ways to mature our IT organizations and the roles they play in the success of the parent enterprise.

I can see where my previous management got some of their incredibly stupid idea's!

Interesting list to consider and I agree with a good bit of it even if it is sort of "pie in the sky" in some cases.

However, regarding #4 on the top list - "The incentive portion of CIO compensation will be derived from the amount of money created by the efforts of CIOs and their staffs." - I think it should include incentives for the staff as well as the CIO. The CIO manages which is huge but without the staff it would never get done.

And, yes, I am an IT staff member. I desire to serve my customers and my superiors as best as I can but I believe we need to be rewarded for a job well done too.

If you want to ensure no one reads your document, make it lengthy
If you want to ensure no one listens to you, speak at length

Same goes for the bullet points - a few would have had much more credibility than a laundry list

I don't know anything about the author, but I'm not sure why being a Gartner analyst makes one instantly credible and authoritative. A lot of these bullet points are really the same thing (hey, maybe IT should support business profitability objectives...) which is afaik something we all know anyway... others are just plain dumb, like the cloud-o-phobic one, because cloud is just a marketing label, and we all know what happens when you go down that path (which isn't to say 'cloud' labeled tech isn't any good, it's just that the simple act of labeling it cloud doesn't *make* it good).

The Level1/2/3 comment just beggars belief.

Still, regardless, I'm sure a lot of CEO's will be emailing this to their CIO's believing this to be the work of a genius.

Oh, and yes, I'm a CIO. And yes, I actually know something about this subject.

Just checked, yes, he's never run a company, never been a CIO, never been a CEO, and has been perched on the Gartner ivory tower (presumably to gain a better glimpse of the clouds) for 21 years.

Dude, do the job. Be successful. Then tell us how to do it. Otherwise, keep your thoughts to yourself.

IT departments do most if not all of the ever more complex business processing in a modern firm. This increased complexity brings increased risk.

Risk is why projects fail. Risk is why outsourcing is not a silver bullet. Risk is the hot potato no one wants to be stuck with. Risk is what executives are ultimately accountable for.

It is very easy for a CEO on the bridge to charge into dangerous waters. The CIO in the engine room will be the first to fail when things get too hot.

The analogy ends here. Companies are not battleships. Business is not war - contrary to popular mongering. You can't merge the bridge with the engine-room on a battleship (without a torpedo), but you can in a modern company.

Merging CEO and CIO into one position would solve most if not all of the 15 points above. Bad news for both the traditional CEO and CIO types.

We've seen the PowerPoint slide with it's 15 points. Now how about the rest of the presentation. Give us at least a clue on how you think we can do them . Just because someone handed down the 15 commandments from Mt Siani, doesn't mean the we mere mortals have a clue what they really mean. Trying to comment on them intelligently is a wasted excercise in tea leaf reading.

Why are you focusing on only the negative of a few points? has anyone implemented anything listed? Who says that all points have to be followed? who says you can not modify these points to fit your business or requirements?
so i guess i am curious why people are so literal with this.

Because the author has no (zero) qualifications to make these pontificating statements, that's why.

Ok, when you go to the ER with a cardiac arrest, do you want your cardiologist to be working on someone's sprained ankle while you die in a corridor, or do you want a nurse to strap up the sprained ankle while the cardiologist works on you? Extreme, blunt and overstated example, but why are you all listening to someone's opinion who's never even done this job? Seriously ....

I get the value in the statement 'Eradicate Cloud-a-phobia', but this is a little self evident. Cloud services/storage/horsepower is a tool in the toolkit, and you wouldn't want to be afraid to use the right tool for the job. This is like saying 'Eradicate Wrench-a-phobia'. If it's the right tool for the job, use it.
Worse though is 'Cloud-phoria' where IT shop leadership want to use the cloud because it is the latest buzzword that the CEO is asking about and seems cutting edge without asking "Is this the right tool for the job". If your work is requires a high level of privacy compliance, requires a level of local control, or any number of factors, this might not be the right tool for the job. I can foresee a number of TechRepublic stories in the future talking about unwinding bleeding-edge cloud projects because what looked good at the beginning turned out not to provide the cost savings and robustness promised.

I agree the way that Mr. Jason Hiner put to increase tension for more promise Careers and helful,so be newly.

I???ve been in IT for a very long time. Maybe not on the scale that many of you are as I???ve stayed away from the very large IT departments. Since I am currently self employed, I prefer a company size that can???t afford an IT department and take care of everything myself. For a fee of course, but at a substantial savings over hiring someone full time.

That said many of the phrases and terms in this article don???t make sense to me, but I do feel the need to perk up and put in my two-cents even though I don???t generally post a lot, but do a lot of reading.

As it has been pointed out several times by the readers??? comments IT can???t be measured in the true form it really is which is income producing. Since it can???t be measured that way it???s commonly referred to as overhead. This does make me sad, but I would love for any company of any size that thinks IT is an overhead to run their business for one day without technology and remove the computers and servers from the equation. They would quickly learn that IT is in fact income producing (and substantially), but we are still faced with how can this be measured.

If we take the main items from any company such as the robotics that build cars for a manufacturing plant, or the machines that process our food from food processing plants, or even the refrigerator from the sub shop down the road and remove these key items from the establishment they will seize to function. All of these have maintenance systems in place that keep this equipment operational. IT people are the maintenance personal that keeps these networks operational and without them we are back to measuring income and back to pen and paper.

IT is a requirement and there is nothing that can be done about that. We keep the systems operational that allow us as companies to get away from the old way of doing things with pen and paper which does make us all very much more productive. Without these computers and networks many companies could not exists and the computers and networks are required. As fast as technology changes where once a system is in place or many times before it???s in place it???s already outdated, companies must stop blaming IT for the required spending. We are not creating the new hardware we are only supporting it. We do create the software as that is generally under IT, but the software created was done so to make something more efficient. We as IT support people do what we can to keep things operational, but again as someone else pointed out when purchases are declined due to cost and then the system goes down, we as IT people take the blame.

Technology is our friend as it has made so many aspects of life and business so much easier, better and more productive, but as long as companies want to be this efficient they will have to invest in IT. The only way IT is going away is if we give up technology and I simply don???t see that happening anytime soon, but rather see technology continuing its run faster than we can generally keep up.

I can???t agree that any best practice is good to kill, but I can agree that specific things in certain organizations may not apply. If a best practice is working then leave it alone. If it can be improved on and made better, then do that. Companies seem to think that to help the bottom line they just need to stop spending so much on IT, but really miss the target by failing to see just how much money IT is making them. Sure, keep cutting this and that, and when it breaks blame the IT department for not keeping it running. I think another user already made this point and it was a point well made.

Based on my target audience I have to have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things as being a small IT shop and taking care of everything from other small businesses makes me have to know a little about a lot of things and more importantly being able to resolve issues I may know nothing about very quickly. It???s part of the job and lucky for me I am good at what I do and the challenge is nice to have from time to time.

I suppose the article was written so that IT shops could streamline more, but honestly I think we in general are already streamlined. IT is income producing perceived as overhead, but you???re not going to let the maintenance people go that keeps the processing equipment running as if that stops the entire plants production stops. No different for IT people as you let that network go down and while everyone can get by for a bit without a computer by simply cleaning up your workspace, but for the most part there is no income producing going on without a computer and network. I think we may be looking to cut corners in the wrong direction, but agree we can always make things better with technology changing as quickly as it does.

I think business needs to stop seeing IT as overhead, and understand that IT is your friend not enemy.

Rob ??? Always looking for extra work and again reasonable.

The end of the mega-IT project will come with the end of the mega-IT ego

Am surprised there isn't anything about how in-house IT depts work with "partner" organisations. I believe in healthy skepticism and think the in-house IT guys need to protect the more naive business user from the fantasy land some suppliers offer. However I know too many IT depts who treat *all* partners as hostile job-stealing monsters who are automatically "the enemy" regardless of the value they bring to the business.

Proposing to eliminate, reject or terminate dysfunctional practices can realistically be considered if it would have accompanied options, alternatives and substitutes.

Oswald Cobblepot

The definition of cloud is non-existent. I believe this is a reference to data being kept somewhere in the cloud or off-site at one or more locations. I think there are good reasons to fear the cloud. Perhaps keep an open to cloud solutions but don't dismiss the obvious problems and concerns.

The reliability and availability of the cloud is only as good as your link to the cloud. If you lose your link, how do you continue to work? How is business continuity addressed? How much more will it cost to double your telecommunication costs?

Reality is we cannot just trust all snakes. No snakes we are over run with rodents, but, we don???t want rattle snakes living in our bedroom. Having a healthy respect for what the cloud can do or cannot do is important, some phobia can be healthy.

A link I followed to this article showed an expansion on just the list, with at least a paragraph of explanation about each point - where is it? Hard to justify without context.

Jason, Thank you for sharing the manifesto and the 15 points of transformation with us, who were not able to attend the Gartner conference. I want to say that there are people who've worked in very large enterprises with plenty of complex budget and approval silos that have lived by points 2 through 6 for a long time. The guiding principle has been summed up by myself and others in a simple guideline: "Is it going to increase 'profitable' revenue, decrease costs, or change business process to enable more product and service delivery? If not, don't do it."
Doing what is smart for BUSINESS has been a mantra for quite a few information systems leaders for many years.
Chris
Atlanta, GA

I want to align the exit strategy with the cloud pradigm shift and the synergy of organic growth. Now if I could just figure out how to put this sentence into bullet points and make $150k+ a year doing it I would be all set.

Always easy to spot those who like to talk about the management of technology with little real understanding of what enterprise wide technology entails.

I'm not sure I understand why abandoning level 1, 2, & 3 support would help in this case. Please explain?