Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

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The majority of changes in CA IT are driven by the business.

Exactly! As it should be. (As it better be.) The challenge for IT is to prove what they want is in the best interest of the business, not the IT department. We know that, we just have trouble communicating it.

Why should the business care about getting new servers or having developers waste their time rewriting already functioning code?

It's your job to answer that question. They just don't know. I had a client with slow response times the previous holiday season. Business had doubled since then. I had to paint a clear picture of what it would be like on the same infrastruture for the upcoming holiday season. x dollars spent vs. y business lost. That's a language they can understand.

Most people in corporate IT want to do a good job.

And that job is much more than development or administration. One of corporate IT's biggest job is education. We shouldn't blame others for not understanding what is clear to us. It's also our job to get them to "see the light".

(Maybe that's why I like hacking so much. I find it much easier communicating with my computer than with the bosses.)

Not necessarily as it should be. Many modern business models really are, at their core, automation problems. Think of the heavily automated factory, or brokerage. These firms clearly need "domain expertise" in what they do, but the minute-to-minute operation of the business is done not by the experts, but by the automation systems.

In such a circumstance, it might make sense for the "IT" department to actually run the show, and use the experts in a consulting role. Instead, as the linked blog points out, the opposite is usually true.

And it's not like this hasn't been done. Look at Amazon: that's exactly what they are. Business-wise, they're just another mail order retailer. But they think of themselves as a software company, and they've been immensely successful.

Still, those refactorings can be justified as necessary enhancements, important to the survival of the business.

For that, of course, you need a relationship where there is a strong leader at the head of the IT organisation, who's willing to set priorities that will satisfy both the business and IT, and where the business side respects the IT organisation so that they don't constantly attempt to steam-roller over IT initiatives with their own urgent changes.

So, effectively, a stronger IT organisation is required. Despite the OP's assertion that IT departments are full of smart people, they are also full of not-so-smart people who don't do a good job. Once the business side is stung by repeated delays and issues, they stop trusting the IT side and the problems start increasing...

Amazon's excellent technology is the result of IT serving its business requirements, not the cause of it.

Although they started out selling books, they had a grander vision. Sometimes I wonder if AWS was really planned or if it's just a byproduct of IT doing its job so well. This wouldn't be the first time a non-tech firm has become a tech firm once it realized that its most valuable asset was the techology it developed to serve its original needs.

I guess there's sort of a chicken and egg thing here, so your point isn't really falsifiable. But again, the way Amazon is structured is as a software company. They build a product, and then hand that off to the operations side to implement. The big movers and decision makers in the company are on the product development side, and not on the implementation side.

That structure is the reverse of the typical corporate IT structure, where the people developing the product are routinely taking orders from the people who need to use those products.

http://coderific.com/employers/7

Interesting. I've never read so many negative things about Amazon in one place before.

I have to disagree with you somewhat here. Until businesses stop seeing IT departments only as "cost centers" you'll be able to try to "convince" them of what's in their interest until you're blue in the face. And I don't believe it's only IT's job to convince the business what is needed. Many businesses need to take a more active role in analyzing and understanding what IT departments do for them- they're the ones footing the bill, after all. You wouldn't make a new investment or buy a new (insert item her) without first UNDERSTANDING what you're getting, would you?

Furthermore, my company views all IT department spending as a cost and only a cost. But think about this: in the last several years, we developed a sophisticated (insurance) Simulated Rating Engine that actually performs rating of policies for underwriters. This rating information directly makes our company money- either by raising the amount of premium we charge, or lowering the exposure for claims against the company. But I can guarantee you won't get the company to consider this IT "making" them money. They paid a fixed cost for some magical technology black box. Now, the results of USING the black box are counted toward the underwriters, not IT.

This is just one concrete example of why I believe CA attitudes about IT contributions to the business need to change. Without that type of shift, IT will always be just another cost on the balance sheet- only able to take orders from the business (even if we are actively changing things and/or doing what's in the company's interest).

agreed

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