The call of the cyber sirens

The promise of new technology can be a real siren's call to an IT department. New windows versions, new storage systems, a better process implementation can seem so incredibly good that the business case seems to write itself. Then comes the implementation project, and reality serves cold coffee for breakfast.

Jim Collins (Good to Great) once likened smooth operations and steady improvements in great organizations to a flywheel. It turns steadily, and with steady increments it can go faster and faster. Great results come from evolution.

Similarly, the most important function of an IT department is to support the central process of the company by ensuring the utility and warranty of its IT assets. In short, keep it ticking over nicely. Improvements are always welcomed, revolutions are not.

The cloud, (internal) social networks, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) support are al great phenomena with a lot of promise, but at the same time they are silly fads that have yet to prove that they can add to your company's bottom line. Yes, they add billions to Apple and facebook, but the odds are your company has a different focus altogether. Readiness for 2015 does not mean equipping all employees with telepathy chips over the next six months.

Once in a while the sales pitch is just too good and an IT department saddles up, corrals some consultants, and goes to work delivering tomorrow, today. Research says at least 30% of IT projects fail, costing businesses green stuff without ever delivering on their promise. Some estimate as many as 68% of IT projects are doomed. Most participants are even aware of this, never expecting a hyped up IT project to succeed at all. What happened there? Lack of ambition? Steady improvements? Nope. Finance forgot to tie Odysseus with a nice tight budget.

On the other hand there are a lot of businesses doing amazing things with technology, step by step bypassing their impulsive competitors to reach a level of sophistication beyond any of them. The aforementioned book contains examples of companies progressing steadily from old-skool a-technical companies to operating their own custom satellite systems, one small step at a time, never trying to go from 0.1 to 2.0 in one giant leap.

In short, IT departments might do well to instill a motto, "we live to serve" or something humble like that, and make sure that they run the smoothest IT operation rather than the most cutting edge. DevOps, anyone?