Comments on: Conventional wisdom that fails for IT

By: jfbauer

jfbauer — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:56:33 +0000

Peter, thanks for the positive feedback and the links. I’ve started my blog looking at IT from a first level manager responsible for a technology/engineering team who might have some influence in shaping the organizations IT projects and decisions, but more than likely, has to shape his/her team’s services around an existing (probably flawed) IT PMO/PLC.

PM Hut, definitely on board … that legacy system that is critical to some core business function and hasn’t been modernized always seems to generate an investment in layers of complexity around it to make up for its short comings. So, yes, it ain’t broke thus nobody is fixing it, but how much investment is going on around it that could be greatly reduced if the legacy systems was not legacy.

By: Peter Kretzman

Peter Kretzman — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:48:03 +0000

Agreed. Now mind you, I’m not favoring indiscriminate change either. But what people often miss is that no system is standalone: everything around it changes, like one of those ancient houses you sometimes see in a city, where the owner refused to sell and huge skyscrapers went up all around it. In IT, just working around the old-and-in-the-way system adds stress, uncertainty, and risk.

Thanks for the comment.

By: PM Hut

PM Hut — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:09:57 +0000

Your first point, If it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it, is spot on. There are lots of companies out there who have this as their IT motto.

I have to say that this saying hinders the progress (a lot) in IT projects. When was the last time you saw the system they use in a bank change, or the POS systems, or the travel agent reservation system. A lot of these systems still run on COBOL (which is probably the most annoying programming language in the world). It’s all because someone decided that “It’s not broken, so we’re not gonna fix it”.

By: Peter Kretzman

Peter Kretzman — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:48:25 +0000

Excellent thoughts in your post as well, John! You might want to check out my post on “Cementing a formal work initiation process for IT projects”, at http://www.peterkretzman.com/2008/01/25/cementing-a-formal-work-initiation-process-for-it-projects/

Also, I write quite a bit on Project Portfolio Management; I believe the topic you identify here is critical to success (i.e., how to prioritize new software dev initiatives). See “The Practical CIO: Difficulties in project prioritization & selection, part 1″, at http://www.peterkretzman.com/2009/07/31/the-practical-cio-difficulties-in-project-prioritization-selection-part-1/

I look forward to reading more of your blog!

By: jfbauer

jfbauer — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:01:47 +0000

Good article … it got me thinking. I just moved to small company in the legal services industry that has a heavy investment in proprietary custom developed software and I’ve been somewhat struggling with how the committee of senior directors wrestle with the priority of new software development initiatives. Much discussion occurs over the crisis of the moment only to be trumped by the next schedule meeting and its associated new crisis. From your article, I’m leaning more towards there is value in the wrestling than prior. I’ll have to keep thinking of how I can assist with smoothing out the spikes in the priority of new requests.

Work so far on what I call the single view of the work: http://bit.ly/1AWAIr

By: Blogs for October 2009 « A CIO's Voice

Blogs for October 2009 « A CIO's Voice — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:27:52 +0000

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