8 Things We Hate About IT: How to Move Beyond the Frustrations to Form a New Partnership with IT

by Susan Cramm

Overview

"Why can't you get what you really want from IT? All you desire is a ready-and-willing partner to help you exploit IT to drive your business. Instead, you get endless rules and regulations, not to mention processes, projects, and technologies that deliver too little, too late, for too much. It's frustrating!

How to build a relationship that puts you firmly in control and produces the business results you need? In The 8 Things We Hate About IT, Susan Cramm provides the answers.

Start by understanding differences between operational and IT managers - in backgrounds, personality, pressures, and incentives. Cramm explains how differences prevent operational managers and IT from communicating what, why, and how they do what they do.

Citing case studies and stories, the author then presents practical strategies for overcoming the difficulty. These include seeing things from your IT partners' perspective, developing a single version of 'truth,' and assuming accountability for IT just as you've done for management of your firm's financial and human resources.

Brutally honest, provocative, and filled with sound advice, this book reveals that the key to solving the IT problem is decidedly un-IT: it's a deeper understanding of human behavior, including how to apply your leadership skills to the world of IT."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781422157831
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	03/29/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Susan Cramm is Founder and President of Valuedance and a recognized industry expert on information technology leadership. She has consulted to executives from a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Toyota, Novartis, Whole Foods Markets, and Sony. She is an award-winning writer and author of the Harvard Business Review blog “Have IT Your Way.”

Read an Excerpt

What To Expect In This Book
This book is organized by the “eight hates” outline above, with a chapter dedicated to each to examine and reconcile the frustrations. We will change the “ors” into “ands” by answering the following questions:
• Chapter 1: How can serve in a controlled manner?
• Chapter 2: How can we deliver results while enhancing the relationship?
• Chapter 3: How can we identify tactics that are grounded in strategy?
• Chapter 4: How can we make sure our expenses are investments?
• Chapter 5: How can deliver quickly, with quality?
• Chapter 6: How can we have customized standardization?
• Chapter 7: How can we innovate in spite of the bureaucracy?
• Chapter 8: How can transform from good to great IT?
In reading this book, business leaders may feel like I am letting IT off easy and making the whole IT-business relationship thing their problem to solve. I am. The only person you can change is you and, in the process of changing yourself, IT will be forced to change. Great relationships aren’t 50-50, they are 100-100 with each party doing whatever they can to meet the needs of the other. But rest assured, while I am nagging you, the business leader, I am also implicitly holding IT accountable for being a good partner. In the last chapter, I make the implicit, explicit by summarizing what you should expect from IT, and if you aren’t getting it, outlining how to serve yourself if IT is incapable of doing so.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 You Need Service, and IT Needs Control 15

2 You Need Results, and IT Needs Respect 29

3 You Need to Focus on Tactics, and IT Needs Strategic Alignment 43

4 You Need IT Funding, and IT Needs Returns 63

5 You Need On-time Delivery, and IT Needs Quality 85

6 You Need Customization, and IT Needs Standardization 107

7 You Need Innovation, and IT Functions in Bureaucracy 125

8 You Need Good IT, and IT Can Become Great 141

Appendix A A Primer on Fast-Cycle Development 157

Appendix B Emerging Technologies 161

Appendix C Key Responsibilities of the New Business-IT Partnership 167

Notes 171

Index 181

About the Author 193