Posts tagged Funding
Managing the Polarity of Information Technology User vs. Purchaser Desires
0I have written previously about how polarity management needs to be a core competency of Information Technology Professionals.
Information Technology (IT) Management (ITM) requires polarity management to balance the needs of users as well as those of the stakeholders who pay for new and upgraded IT systems. Most users really don’t care what their IT systems cost. They desire ease of use, performance, individualism, and aesthetic. The parties responsible for resourcing IT systems, on the other hand, usually value cost efficiency, standardization, simplicity, and longevity. Both of these parties have requirements that are desirable, admirable, and valuable. Unfortunately perfecting providing for either group is impossible and mutually exclusive. Hence the definition of a polarity requiring management vice a problem deserving a solution.
My point is not that one of these attributes is more important, desirable, or better than the other. I see a lot of IT Departments that are obviously aligned much more in favor of one than the other. Most of them don’t even realize that they have slowly drifted there over time with the best of intentions. As you look at your work sites or organizations, which rings more true? Are the IT Departments running themselves ragged trying to meet everyone’s individual hardware and software needs? Or, is the Help Desk more closely regarded as a plane of hell by the employees? Is there an “us vs. them” mentality present? Is the CIO constantly trying to explain to the other C-Level execs why he is spending so much money or is he constantly touting new cost savings measures? Are the questions on the user questionnaires so bland as to elicit no input or suggestively brutal? Does everyone have the same machine on their desk or is there a mix of brands, colors, and sizes? Are users constantly logging into publicly available web based services to “get work done” or are they using local applications?
A great book that describes the proper frame of reference is Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems by Dr. Barry Johnson.
The Learning Exchange has a great summary of Polarity Management:
“Polarity Management is powerful tool that leverages the best of apparent opposites resulting in win-win solutions. Many challenges are not problems that can be solved with either/or solutions. Rather, they are dilemmas or polarities to be managed. Polarity mapping provides a complete picture of the interdependent opposing forces that often create gridlock. Working with the upsides of both poles, predictions can be made for the types of change that will result from any strategy.” (link )
Polarity Map
You should think of user needs and system resourcers as trying to move the positive poles of two magnets near each other. There is a stable resistance point where they will stay, but if they are forced any more closer they deflect and end up ruining any hopes of stability. Like the author says, there is no such thing as being only in the state of inhaling or exhaling, you need to always be in the perfect balance as you manage the breathing polarity.
I think that IT Departments fall into this predicament for all the right reasons by either thinking of themselves only as customer service agents (i.e. Help Desks) or utility providers. Obviously, you need to strike the right balance for your organization. If users run the place, you will lose cost controls, create unnecessary security risks, and be constantly fighting configuration management challenges. Of course, if money is the only metric, your users might as well not have computers if the ones provided don’t meet their needs for production and support that is not, well, supportive, might as well not exist. My overall comment, is mainly, that as a leader, you often need to frame issues correctly for your teams, supervisors, and users in order to begin to manage them correctly. The issue of user needs vs. corporate needs is a polarity to be managed — not a problem that can be solved. The sooner that all parties come to agreement on that and start seeing the challenge for what it is, is the sooner that your information technology systems begin to be contributors to your competitive differentiation and stop being hurdles to both your corporate bottom line and users desires.
Do you think that I characterized this challenge of the IT Department correctly? Do you know of any case studies showing success? How does your organization balance this issue?
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for July 24, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin.
Image Credit: polaritymanagement.com
Information Technology Cost Trends
1Recently, it was brought to my attention that even though the cost of desktop hardware had plummeted over the past decade, industry spending on “IT Services” has actually risen. That made me start to think about how costs across the Information Technology field were calculated, estimated, and executed. I came to the conclusion that we may still be maturing as a field and that we should be very careful of making predictions for future revenues based upon historic trends.
Here are some costs that are shrinking. They are all for hardware.
- Today, a business class laptop for an average user costs only $500-$800. That is down from nearly $1500 only four years ago.
- A desktop can be had for the exact same amount including the monitor.
- Smartphone’s cost about half as much as two years ago.
- A small business server costs about $1500-$2000. This is only about 80% of four years ago.
On the other hand, some costs have risen. The following come from anecdotal evidence only, but are all for the service component.
- The average size of IT Departments seems to have risen over the past 5 years. Sometimes by 20%
- The average salary of IT pros is up.
- The number of tiers in IT departments between the CIO and entry level has increased, meaning that the upper echelons are making significantly more as a multiple of the beginners.
- The fee on service contracts seems to be up by 3-5%.
Contrary to the trend in hardware costs, service costs, the human side, of the business is becoming much more expensive. I am not sure if this is indicative of growing reliance on IT or the realization that it is the key business competitive enabler of the Information Age. Unfortunately, it may also just be greed and exploitation as the technology has slowing become more and more complicated combined with ever growing public acceptance of the security vulnerabilities.
As a profession, I think that we owe it to our stakeholders to decide for ourselves what the correct cost of IT as a fraction of business overhead is. We then need to set standards within our field to hold to that standard. If we don’t act, then the market will decide what is correct and that, unfortunately, might mean that they assume that IT costs as a service should be declining at the same rate as the hardware obviously is.
Do you think that IT costs are acceptable? Too high? Low? Static or Dynamic?
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 5, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin