[LINK] Devil in the Detail

[Jan Whitaker]

At 04:55 PM 5/04/2005, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>Well, perhaps frustrated architects need to consider the possibility
>that technology is not a "fundamental building block" of the business.
>At least not to your colleagues. In most cases, they believe customers
>are - and sales, and customer service, and revenue collection, and the
>acquisition and retention of great staff. So you fellas down in the IT
>dungeon, where seats next to windows are an executive perk, don't make
>the A list, no matter how good you think this SOA stuff is, or how new
>software development and integration technologies can create exciting
>options for the business.

Interesting article.  There's one way to point out the integral importance 
of IT in their activities. Put the system off line for a week. Heck, 
wouldn't take that long, would it?  Two days would do it in some 
organisations.  With some people, losing their email for 2 hours gives them 
the heeby-jeebies.

Some Execs are just people who don't want to learn anything.  That's human 
nature, too.  They think they know all they need to know or they wouldn't 
have the big oak/marble/glasstop desk in the corner on floor 45, would 
they?  Learning is hard. Listening and hearing is hard. It takes 
concentration. It stirs up brain cells and nerve connections. IT itself 
takes a different way of thinking for some people who came up through the 
marketing department or human resources. It's a new domain [yes, that's a 
psychological term, probably fuzzy, to fuzzy for non-educationalists to 
figure out] of cognition.

If anything, execs should thank the gods for the people who CAN do these 
things for them since they get the benefits and don't have to learn too 
much about it except defining just what business goals they have and have 
good analysts and designers around them to put the services in place.  I 
wonder if they would be happy with the answer, 'trust me and give me a good 
budget'?

>  how is anyone in IT supposed
>to be able to architect the optimal IT environment?

Is 'architect' ever a verb like this?  I don't think so.

>An average IT shop in an Australian company of more than
>1000 staff spends more than 60 percent of its entire budget to simply
>keep the lights on.

Uh, yes? And your point?  Should they be spending 60% on development? Why? 
If it works, maintenance seems to be the name of the game.

Thanks for sharing, BRD,
Jan



JLWhitaker Associates
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at melbpc.org.au  --  http://member.melbpc.org.au/~jwhit/whitentr.htm
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