Recycled Bullsh-IT

If everything in business stayed the same, or anything new was so easy to do that your great-aunt Doris could fix it in an instant, we wouldn’t need the huge industry that serves Business Change. If computing was as simple as turning on a switch, we wouldn’t need the even bigger and more despised IT Departments, and their army of project managers, programme managers, business analysts, solution architects, etc. However, given that IT is the biggest unacknowledged Ponzi scheme around, it suits many of us to keep schtum and enjoy it while it lasts.

Imagine a Chief Marketing Officer, trying their best to hit their targets rather than their head against a brick wall, who comes up with a great idea to build the better mousetrap or attack a new market. In the old days, they would knock out a PissPoorPoint, blitz their business prospects, flog them the new widget and come back to high fives from the rest of the sales & marketing department. And then throw the paperwork over the cubicle wall to the operations and delivery folk to somehow make happen. Nowadays, with computing so fundamental to everything a business does, the sponsor will probably go through the following:

• Have bright/desperate idea
• Try to see if it can be done with no IT involvement, but fail 90% of the time
• Reluctantly engage with Change Function or PMO (Put Me Off, Prevention of Most Options, or something), and be told to fill out form PID (Project Initiation Document) or OP (Opportunity Paper). Try not to tell them to PID OP
• Randomly tick the compliance boxes and make up some ridiculously high benefits and low costs to get through the first Gate of the long and winding process to gaining approval and delivery of what they need
• Present to the Weekly/Monthly Change Board to gain approval to either kick off a project, or be sent away to come back the following week with a better case
• EITHER breath a sigh of relief that only 3 months have been wasted to get started OR swear inventively as they watch the competition fly by and snatch the market

What about agile! I hear some of you cry if you’re not already weeping in sympathy. Well, in most companies where agile has some traction, this gating process precedes inception, so nothing can happen until the bean-counters have their say as part of this initial decision. And don’t get me started again on Governance…

Something Better Change

So, is your organisation promoting exciting innovation or will-sapping enervation? Balancing business flexibility with financial prudence is probably both necessary and incredibly difficult at the moment. Here’s some impudent innovation ideas:

1. Big Bens: The benefits should be so compelling that even the Scrooges in finance can’t find fault, for which you’ll need empirical evidence not wishful waffle
2. Multi-disciplinary: Nothing to do with your Fifty Shades dungeon, but involving reps from all the other departments who can help you design and deliver your cunning plan
3. Quickie Delivery: Make it happen faster than a super-spreader, so you get the return intra-quarter
4. DIY: Fund it yourself out of your current budget to get to working prototype before having to hold your cap out. If you haven’t squirrelled away a slush fund you don’t deserve to be running a department
5. Keep it Simple, Sponsor: Tempting as it may be to stuff your proposal with lots of extra features, focus on the killer capability first
6. Say No to Debt: Snappy ‘n’ clean not quick ‘n’ dirty as we have enough technical debt from your unsuccessful predecessors, thank you very much

As ever, if this was easy, we’d open a socially-distanced shop. Just apply some energy, smarts and focus and you’ll be surprised how much you can do.

John “P M” Moe