Run IT as a business -- why that's a train wreck waiting to happen | Hacker News Reader

Run IT as a business -- why that's a train wreck waiting to happen

computerworlduk.com

51 pointsmonkeygrinder14 comments

"Primarily, I asked him why he didn't transition from building web apps to instead creating a solution using cloud technology and true mobile devices like BlackBerrys, iPods, and emerging tablets. He could offer a better solution, at about a quarter of the cost. "

That quote made me chuckle since it just seems to be so out of context with what the article is trying to say.

Why not new buzzword instead of old buzzword?! At only a quarter of the cost! Seriously, if the development organisation is having problems creating CRUD-webapps maybe switching to "emerging tablets" is not the answer..

> That quote made me chuckle since it just seems to be so out > of context with what the article is trying to say.

I too read and reread that. If you are trying to sell a new way to run IT, maybe you shouldn't make buzzword sausage.

This reminds me of a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal in the early '90s by the president of Cornell. He wrote about how universities aren't businesses and about how treating them as such will have disastrous long-term effects. He observed that there are many higher-education institutions that have been around hundreds of years but few commercial enterprises; also how the goals of higher education are compromised by the pursuit of shareholder value.

I would like to find that essay again. If anyone can point to a link please post it.

The implication, however, is that higher-education institutions that last for hundreds of years are better for education.

Who's to say Cornell is a better 'educational institution' than Wikipedia?

Sure a degree from Cornell looks better on your resume than reading a bunch of information on wikipedia, but that's not a measure of education.

"Better for education" might not mean "better for undergrads." It might mean expanding the sum of human knowledge through pure research. That's a lofty goal that might frequently lie at odds with the upstairs-downstairs nature of actual grad school but enough good work comes out of large research-oriented universities to note. Smaller universities and colleges that don't do much research can still contribute to a community in other ways - libraries, lectures, publications. A lot of the benefits of higher ed to society don't come from teaching (or babysitting) undergrads. That parallels the point of the OP - if you focus solely on the bits that make you money in the short term you may miss out on some other good stuff.

In a perfect enterprise this would work. But in reality this is just a theoretical as the solutions the author debunks.

The problem with companies is that they have departments and whether you like it or not those departments compete with other departments for resources. That in turn means those departments have matters that they want to keep internal (like “we pushed a lot of next quarter’s sales onto this year to make ourselves look better at review time”)

To make the point try this and see what reaction you get. Go up to a senior exec. in your company and say “Hi. I’m from IT. I’m going to sit in on all of your internal meetings, have access to all your internal numbers and pretty much act like a part of your team. Except that I won’t be reporting to you and will report everything you say and do to my own boss”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I disagree with the author. But for his theory to work IT people need to realize they aren’t the biggest hurdle. The bigger hurdle is to get your organization to buy into transparency. To adopt an open culture where people act as a whole organization and not a series of departments. Only then can IT integrate itself as the author suggests.

Your In a perfect enterprise line carries the implication that no companies are like what he described. But I've worked in multiple companies that worked like this.

Just because your company doesn't do this doesn't mean that others don't.

As for your silly example, you're pushing enforced openness. But people, even in the most open companies, sometimes need to be closed. However if the company is working well then people have no problem reaching out to IT early.

Incidentally in my last job there indeed was a woman who was part of IT but sat in on another department's internal meetings, saw figures, etc. She took on that role after the previous project manager left. Said project manager was from that department but was managing several IT people. Either way IT and the other department are integrated together.

Favorite quote: Nobody in IT should ever say, "You're my customer and my job is to make sure you're satisfied," or ask, "What do you want me to do?"

Instead, they should say, "My job is to help you and the company succeed," followed by "Show me how you do things now," and "Let's figure out a better way of getting this done."

Hear, hear! It's amazing what happens when people work together rather than against each other.

Ahh... I'd love to do that... but, unless you're the head of IT (and probably not even then), it's very difficult to get other departments to see it that way. I definitely see lots of opportunities for process improvements at my current job, but it's not easy to push them to the decision-makers (I'm quite low on the ladder :P )

I think the problem with having people admit that it doesn't make sense to run the IT department as a business is that it flies in the face of capitalist ideology.

If a corporation can better succeed by having everyone work "as a team" instead of as businesses buying and selling services, maybe society can, too? But wait, doesn't that sound like "socialism"? ;-)

A corporation is a government construct, hence it is a socialist construct, not a capitalist one. It is a direct creation of and controlled by the government.

<a href="http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0411e.asp>; "We should recognize that state corporatism is a form of socialism, and it is nearly inevitable in a mixed economy that the introduction of more socialism will cartelize industry and consolidate wealth in the hands of the few." </a>

Therefore, describing it as capitalist is misleading.

It is a direct creation of and controlled by the government.

Well I'm not sure I'm with you on that one. Maybe that was the original intent, when government would revoke charters etc., but we're pretty far from that time now.

Anyway, what is a capitalist construct then?

This is a great article that really gets right to the heart of the problem with enterprise IT. I started cutting and pasting great lines for my response until I realized that were just too many of them. Read the whole thing.

This is, of course, a great situation for us hackers with consulting and software businesses. When people in enterprises can't get what they need from corporate IT, they turn to those who can provide it. I wonder how many web startups originally intended to serve consumers but ended up serving more people at work instead.

This is nothing new. PC's were originally targeted for the home until users in large enterprises found ways to buy them with them own budgets. The same thing is happening now with software and services.

When users have serious big dollar business problems and they're not getting what they need internally, that opens up the opportunity for someone else to step into the void, and I, for one, am happy to oblige.

OP also hints at the best news of all: this situation probably won't change much until we change it from the outside. Let's do it.

I came to a screeching halt when I read past the pile-up of buzzwords: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059925

Is there something worthwhile after that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com