Written in November 2010, unpublished until now.
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R.I.P IT
The End of the Pain
As a former Vice President of IT, I'm very self aware and know that dealing with IT is the equivalent of walking across hot coals. I know because I had to walk across my own coals. Information Technology organizations are digging themselves a hole and retracting into more process, governance, and bureaucracy. I picture a bunch of concentric circles that represent layers of resistance; business leaders trying to solve business issues, respond to competitive pressures, or innovate have to penetrate the layers. Sadly, many times they are told "no" or at best get something less than 100 percent of what they need. Now, I need to stop here and say that I'm not trying to villainize the people in IT - it's the systems and processes that are the problem. IT needs to be reinvented and I have a thought on how this might happen. Let's first establish that IT won't reinvent itself - been there with the speech and got the t-shirt. IT has to diverge to reinvent it's self, or should I say extinguish itself.
Within 5 years we're going to see the first of the Fortune 500 companies eliminate IT from their organization. That's right, no IT department. I'm seeing this develop right now. I've talked to so many companies that have Emerging Technology, Innovation, Digital, Social, Mobile and Strategy departments that are looking for new ways to serve customers with technology. Many times these departments report into business units, cherry pick technologists that demonstrate business acumen and are looking to flank around IT. Just like any monopoly, IT enjoys a position of power, but when an alternative appears many companies will jump on it. That alternative is becoming closer to reality. It's being disguised as "Cloud" computing, but really it's a convergence of IT capabilities that can put the power to deliver in the business person's hands. Once these platforms congeal, they will offer a set of capabilities that could render IT useless. The IT organization will split like a roman candle - development goes to the business unit in the form of a product manager and infrastructure goes to procurement in the form of a vendor/relationship management duty. Lower cost, faster speed to market, and no hot coals.
2 comments:
Come to this discussion from a business user point of view and in my view having a sincere customer solutions mindset, will go farther to keep an organization ahead of the pack. If IT departments can build customer relations mantra into their DNA, this would be the single best initiative they can take on to help their organization compete.
Thanks for sharing, Mike.
I’m also seeing IT functions increasingly move to business units, especially for platform management with SaaS applications. For IT departments to remain relevant and avoid obsolescence, they must evolve. By embracing agility, innovation, and a service-oriented mindset, IT can shift from being seen as a bottleneck to an indispensable driver of business success.
The key will be speed—how quickly IT can adapt to advancements and new expectations. To succeed, they’ll need to:
1. Transition from gatekeeper to business enabler, embedding within business units and taking a proactive "yes, and here’s how" approach.
2. Prioritize agility and speed by adopting DevOps, automation, and rapid prototyping.
3. Focus on governance and security with policies that balance innovation and compliance.
4. Embrace cloud and emerging technologies, empowering self-service and leveraging AI and automation.
5. Develop a customer-centric mindset, treating IT as a product with SLAs and continuous improvement.
6. Invest in talent, upskilling IT professionals with business and tech acumen.
7. Lead digital transformation by acting as strategic advisors to business units.
8. Bridge the gap between IT and business by fostering cross-functional collaboration and speaking the language of business outcomes.
I see the question more about but how quickly they can evolve to meet these challenges.
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