We regularly hear that "there is no such thing as an IT
project, only business initiatives." But we do not need to look far
to find business initiatives being managed as IT
projects.
The UK public sector is rife with examples, such as the
NHS National Programme for IT, the Medical
Training Application Scheme, identity cards, and the
Farm Payments scheme.
Apart from the obvious combination of government and IT project,
each of these high-profile initiatives has two common themes:
disappointment and unexpected cost.
We ignore this at our peril and we must ask why this still
happens. Are we not getting better at IT?
Well, the fact is that we are getting better at IT, but the
never-ending series of expensive cock-ups shows that we are not
getting any better at managing change.
Fumbling the ingredients
Of course, IT is not to blame IT is not the primary culprit for
any failure. But poor selection and application of technology are
crippling symptoms of a much bigger problem - our overwhelming
subservience to the prevailing IT paradigm.
IT has become the be all and end all for far too many people. We
call ourselves IT professionals our magazines and newspapers deal
exclusively in IT terms, and far too many business interactions are
predicated on the mistaken belief that IT needs to get closer to
the business.
In my view, IT and business are too close for comfort. Too close
because the narrow focus on IT invariably neglects the broader
nature of the overlying information systems, at great detriment to
our ability to effectively achieve these information systems.
Of course, IT is a vital part of a modern system, but it by no
means represents the whole recipe. After all, if you baked a cake
with flour alone, your customers would not thank you for the
results. They would rightly ask: what happened to the eggs, butter
and sugar?
Rewriting the recipe book
That is exactly what I think is happening with many of our
so-called IT projects: we are forgetting to put in the proper
ingredients.
An information system needs much more than dollops of technology
it needs proper proportions of people, organisation, process and
data. Technology is not quite the icing on the cake, but it should
be measured in similar terms if we want to achieve palatable
results.
To deliver true value we need a whole new outlook, based
holistically on information systems, not just information
technology.
A new information system paradigm will be a natural step,
marking further progress in our evolutionary journey from the
earlier paradigms of computing, data processing and IT.
We need to break free from the hobbles of the IT paradigm and
start talking seriously about information systems instead.
● Colin Beveridge is chief executive at consultancy Hadley
Grant
● Hadley Grant is running an event at the Magic
Circle Headquarters on 21 June where Beveridge will set out an
agenda for change with practical remedies
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