Remembering Your IT Guy

Every IT department I’ve ever walked into has a linchpin. This individual is a stakeholder on all major technology initiatives, understands the organization’s platform code base and configuration, and is on every support email thread from business users.

A lot of managers and consultants will flag this as a problem, and it is, but let’s analyze the reasons why and what a technology department can do to turn this situation into a opportunity to build value.

The Problem

There are reoccurring problem points I hear from technology and business leaders around this topic.
1. Technology projects are not being completed efficiently. Pending actions on the part of IT are viewed as the holdup.
2. Business users report low satisfaction levels on custom applications.
3. Enhancements and bug fixes to existing platforms take months to deliver. A long backlog of business requests goes untouched.
4. The department worries what will happen if IT Guy leaves.

The Real Problem

My favorite part of a technology governance presentation is the Resource slide. A department has just spent months deploying a new software platform and receives a presentation from a software vendor or consulting company on the departmental roles needed to support the new technology. The roles are too theoretical to map to real people and departments know that even if this wasn’t the case 9 times out of 10 they won’t get additional headcount approval anyway.

So what is the real problem here?
1. Technology departments have limited headcount to utilize across new and existing initiatives.
2. A-list employees are misaligned to work that does not maximize value for the organization.
3. Projects are not planned and executed in a manner that can result in success for business partners and are sustainable by IT.
4. The current team size is inadequate to support and upgrade a custom code base.

The Solution: Rebooting Your IT Guy

I could go into a lot of detail here about how a technology leader can go about restructuring their IT department. However, most of these points involve long term changes. The following solutions revolve around the theme of a simple realignment to existing IT staff as the changes are simple to implement along with generating quick results from both business stakeholders and in improving team work satisfaction.

1. Align IT Guy to partner with business stakeholders
Business knowledge and problem solving are generally the most valuable skills of the A-list IT Guy. Aligning these individuals to program management functions allows more partnership time with stakeholders. Many organizations utilize non-technical staff to engage the business which generally increases frustration with IT and generates longer backlogs of unmet requirements. The IT guy can generally offer quick solutions based on a mix of organizational and technical experience.

2. Focus on getting business stakeholders and users to adopt then build.
IT has traditionally used a model of build then adopt. A solution is developed based on detailed business and functional requirements, adequately tested then deployed. After all this happens someone may start to focus on who will utilize the technology. Realigning IT Guy in this model will fail because the problem solver will over commit to custom application solutions. The rebooted IT Guy must instead approach business stakeholders with a model of adopt then build. Get business users using technologies through existing tools or free solutions. Plan ways of integrating a solution into the enterprise IT ecosystem, but only execute on that plan if the technology takes off.

3. Stop new custom development projects that are not supportable.
Many IT organizations do not properly calculate TCO around projects. Department focus can shift to managing issues on existing platforms by not properly anticipating lifecycle costs and skill sets that will need to be retained. Minimizing in-house custom development projects can allow more time to focus on business benefits that require less IT overhead.

4. You have to take a stand and shut off some applications.
Yes that’s right. That mission critical application that can only work with IE6 and has daily support requests from its 5 users needs to go. Like with any business, strategies that are not working within the IT portfolio need to be cut in order to focus on activities that will drive value. Many IT leaders will not take this step for career management reasons. However, not cutting failed strategies leaves IT Guy attempting to clean up the mess.

Brook Buchanan is the Founder and Principal Consultant for Collistic