IT’s moment of truth

Judging from the e-mail about my recent columns on open source and outsourcing, a battle is on for the soul of the IT professional in corporate America.

In a rapidly changing technology and business environment, where the excitement of innovation (“I can use Skype to talk to colleagues in India!”) can quickly turn into uncertainty (“Am I using Skype to train my replacement in India?”), no one seems precisely sure about the fundamental role of IT and what general approaches IT should take in solving business problems.

Lest you think you’re about to read yet another frothy, useless treatise on “aligning business and IT,” think again — I promise to spare you that indignity, for you have suffered enough. Instead allow me to offer my own spirited sermon on the battle for the soul of IT. I might not lead you to IT salvation, but I hope I can assist you sidesteping the ignominious path of IT irrelevance.

All who manage IT (myself included, of course) need to constantly remind themselves of IT’s twofold mission. First, to recognize and address the technical challenges that the rest of the business can’t deal with on its own; and second, to stay engaged with business strategy and operations to ensure that decisions with technology implications made outside of IT don’t paint the company into a technological corner. In other words, your job is about two things: technical execution and business influence.

The irony is that business influence is won gradually (or, for the unfortunate, lost quickly) through sustained, quality technical execution. If you’re not doing a good job of solving technology problems, no one will give you the time of day.

The battle for the soul of IT takes place at the same intersection where different approaches to solving technology problems collide. One camp in the battle believes that it ain’t got a thing if it ain’t got that hands-on swing — that IT’s calling is to adopt solutions with every knob and dial of every system and service exposed and in easy reach for maximum tweakability. Those who make other choices are simply technical girly-men who can’t handle the “real” work of IT. In theory, this belief gives IT maximum power over its environment and presumably maximum business leverage. In reality, I think the “we must have our hands on everything” approach simply encourages a lot of useless knob-twiddling and dial-flipping with very little business value. This camp of corporate IT can continue its myopic clinging to hands-on operations as its raison d’être, but I think they are gripping with the cold, stiff fingers of dead men.

The real game for IT is making things work, and making things work in an environment where almost anything can now be outsourced means proving your value by doing a good job of choosing what to let go. Salvation for IT lies in a selfless focus on solving technology problems with the best solutions available. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Based on the angry e-mails I get when I explain why I outsourced this or that function, however, there are still some in IT who think “real” IT involves the heroic punching of buttons and watching all the pretty lights blink. I don’t buy it. While these guys are in the back office endlessly tweaking a system that could be outsourced better/faster/cheaper, they could be in the front office solving the hard-to-solve problems for their businesses. That’s the real soul of IT.