IT garage band: ‘The Invisibles’

My column on invisible ITdefinitely struck a chord, and the sometimes-invisible IT people who read my column made themselves fully visible with some excellent feedback.

Some readers thought I sold the function of IT a little short and offered important clarifications on the theme of “invisible IT.” Charlie Bess , chief tech of application services at EDS and an EDS fellow in Plano, Texas, pointed to the strategic value that IT should work hard to provide to an organization, beyond the focus on invisible, utilitylike infrastructure: “I’d phrase your point a little differently. Mediocre IT is invisible. Good IT is what can make or break a company by enabling new business models or allowing understanding that just is not possible any other way. Whenever I see someone talking about IT being a utility, I know they have a strong infrastructure focus. Value generation within an enterprise is not invisible or a utility.” Charlie’s comments actually dovetail nicely with some of the things I’ve written about the CTO role in past columns. The CTO should be one of the most visible executives in any company, working just as closely with the sales and marketing team as the technology staff. As Charlie suggests, good IT shouldn’t accept invisibility.

Craig Cranfill at McLane Co. in Temple, Texas, wrote in to underscore the importance of measuring performance with excellent suggestions that all CTOs should take note of in order to maintain visibility of IT in their organizations: “I think it is absolutely critical that IT organizations measure their performance. Select five or six critical measurements and measure them on a regular basis. Print color graphs and publish the reports and post them on the break room walls on a regular basis for the enterprise to see. When the measures fall below the expected level of service, include an explanation and corrective action so the organization is always aware of the infrastructure that supports the business.” I’ve always heard that you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and Craig’s approach is a nice example of internal marketing to boot.

Serendipitously, one reader deeply identified with the central analogy of my piece — IT as sound engineer. In addition to his 19 years in IT, Bill Verzal, an AIX administrator at Komatsu America, spent 10 years as a sound engineer. “Set up six hours before the show, tear down for three hours after the show. Go home, sleep. Advil is good.” Yes, this sounds a lot like IT, although the sound engineer is probably never paged in the middle of the night with a sonic emergency.

For some readers, the discussion of IT in context of sound engineering brought forth latent desires for rock ‘n’ roll stardom. Chris Laping, vice president and CIO at GMAC Commercial Holding Capital in Denver wrote: “I’m an aspiring guitar player and have a lot of equipment in the basement. I’ve been playing for 15 years. In my case, I’d gladly leave this gig any day of the week to join the music industry full time! I, too, carefully critique the work of sound engineers at local concerts.” In a follow-up e-mail, Chris told me that last year he joined a hired guitar player and entertained his peers and managers at an executive retreat. Now that’svisibility.

This gives me an idea. Bill Verzal is available to run sound. Chris, if you can play lead, I can probably handle rhythm guitar. All we need is a solid rhythm section to start a traveling IT band. We’ll take song requests in advance via the help desk ticketing systems at our various companies — just don’t ask us to play “Free Bird.”