Here are several excerpts from an article by Jill Dyche, Partner and Co-founder of Baseline Consulting, Six Telltale Signs of IT Failure. Jill’s article is worth reading in it’s entirety, so be sure to check out the complete source article:
We see high-functioning IT organizations that manage their pipelines according to weighted prioritization frameworks that account for business value, available data, and consensus of need. They manage their assets proactively and apply the right skills. They know how to talk to business people.
All this sounds like standard operating procedure, right? Not so fast.
There are IT organizations that wait for the business to engage, assign resources haphazardly and without forethought, fail to scope work, and use jargon so thick it would clog your arteries if you drank it. The well-worn adage is that if you look up and you see that you’re in a hole, stop digging. If there are tools of the trade for IT mediocrity, these six are the shovels…
- The CIO is all about keeping the lights on. Show me a company that measures its IT leadership by system uptime and I’ll show you a bunch of unhappy IT employees. Or a company that’s increasingly offshoring core skills.
- IT is viewed—and run—as a resource pool. Spreading resources too thin risks blurring the lines between projects, rendering completion vague and inchoate.
- IT management tries to squelch information or suppress feedback.
- Lack of business-IT alignment. More specifically, the business won’t consult IT before commissioning outside vendors. It’s an erosion of confidence and trust.
- No closed-loop success measurement.
- No repeatable rules-of-engagement.
