Following is an article I originally published on castlepointe.com in June of 2005. It is still very much relevant today and I thought it was worthy of reprinting.
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Is your IT organization more like a building architect or a building maintenance crew? Both are very important. Without the architect, nothing gets built in the first place. But without the maintenance crew, the great building will begin falling apart almost as soon as it is built.
Most IT organizations are maintenance crews. We spend the vast majority of our time "keeping the lights on." We work very hard at maintaining and extending our systems and applications - and it takes a lot of very smart people a lot of time to do it.
Finding Balance
But to be truly effective, IT organizations must live in both realms. They need to be part maintenance crew and part architect. In a recent study, 72% of respondents, including 60% of IT management, felt that the best ideas for leveraging technology to a business advantage come from groups other than IT! Sixty percent of IT management felt this!
There is no organization better equipped to "connect the dots" between business needs and technology that can meet those needs than IT. But too often, IT organizations allow themselves to be relegated to the role of maintenance crew.
There are really two reasons for this. First, keeping systems and applications running efficiently is no easy task in and of itself. Many IT organizations feel that to do it well is enough. Second, moving into a role of "technology innovator" requires a new, strategic perspective and political element that IT executives don't always find tasteful. But the IT organization that reliquinshes the role of technology innovator to other groups in the company leaves itself open to strategic irrelevance, never-ending budget battles and the ever present specter of outsourcing.
Making the Transition
Ironically enough, the first step to fully embracing an "innovators role" is to become highly efficient at your "operators role." The goal should be to require no more than 70% of your resources (both financial and human) to be consumed maintaining operations - leaving at least 30% available for innovative initiatives. (Many organizations have been able to reduce operational costs to as little as 45-65% of their IT budget!)
The first step may be the most mundane - understand exactly what you do. Document, organize, validate and improve every process, policy and procedure that you use to manage your day-to-day operations. You will inevitably find redundancies and inefficiencies. Eliminate them and roll those resources into innovative functions.
The next step is to stabilize your systems. Ensure the highest level of redundancy and plan your reactions to outages. How much of your team's time is presently spent putting out fires? What would happen if you could instead utilize those resources on your "innovative initiatives"?
The final step is to start communicating everything that IT does in business terms. Forget "5 9's reliability" - that's IT speak. Start talking about the reliability of your organization's financial transactions. Begin building SLA's that tie IT's performance to the ability of the business units to do their job. Understand what your "customers" care about when they assess IT's performance and then measure yourself against those metrics.
Becoming an Innovator
Once you have streamlined and refined your operations and begin to communicate to your business unit "customers" in their terms, you will begin to be seen as your organization's technology innovator. They will turn to you during the early stages of strategic business planning and will rely on you to provide strategic business advantage through the effective use of technology. And after you have proven that you can deliver sustained business value to the organization, you will no longer be viewed as merely the maintenance crew - a mere afterthought to business operations. You will have a seat at the table, your strategic relevance will be understood and you will find much greater budget support for all of your efforts.
But perhaps most importantly, you will be contributing real value to your organization and you and your team will have a great time helping to lead your organization into a new and brighter future.
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