Six CTO lessons from the War in Iraq

Like many, I served as an armchair general during Operation Iraqi Freedom. From my position in front of the TV receiving regular updates on the war and in front of my computer monitoring various Internet news sites, I watched a new kind of warfare unfold in Iraq.

As the war began to wind down, “experts” who had offered their perspectives during the fighting began to offer their insights on what our military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq meant in terms of warfare’s future. As I listened to them, I realized many of their predictions about the future of warfare also applied to the future of enterprise IT.

Here are six lessons I think we can learn about the future of enterprise IT from the war in Iraq:

Lesson 1: Streamline Fighting Forces

Much like the military, enterprises will be using smaller, quick-strike IT efforts to achieve targeted objectives and benefits. Enterprise-wide IT initiatives will be broken into a series of small projects to achieve benefits as quickly as possible and to eliminate many of the risks associated with big projects. The targeted approach will produce better results – and improve the cost effectiveness of most IT efforts.

Lesson 2: Align Technology with Strategy to Create Advantages

The military’s recent success with technology is a very strong argument for the importance of making sure an enterprise’s IT efforts are tightly aligned with the its overall strategies and objectives. 

Lesson 3: Protect Yourself Against Friendly Fire Casualties

Friendly fire incidents can occur in the IT world just like they do in battle. It happens most often when an IT initiative driven by one business unit or function overlaps with one from a different business unit or function, and the efforts end up at cross-purposes with each other. The best way to protect against friendly fire incidents in the IT world is to use an enterprise-wide IT governance structure to prioritize efforts, allocate resources, and monitor activities.

Lesson 4: Be Agile

The coalition forces in Iraq used speed and flexibility to fight a very different kind of war and to achieve strategic advantage. The old monolithic IT model used by most enterprises doesn’t work well in today’s fast paced competitive environment. IT decisions have to be made more quickly, critical IT initiatives have to be completed in the shortest possible time, and benefits have to be realized almost immediately.

Lesson 5: Give People Tools, Then Get Out Of the Way

The coalition forces were very bright, very well prepared, and very focused on their objectives. That’s the way it should work with IT, too. You need to train and develop your IT people, give them the tools they need, and make sure they clearly understand their objectives and what is expected of them. Then you need to get out of the way and let them make things happen.

Lesson 6: Protect Your Supply Lines

In the first few days of the war, our fighting forces outran their supply lines — and the supply lines were left vulnerable to attack. An enterprise’s legacy/core systems and infrastructure represent the supply line in the IT world. There’s a good chance an enterprise’s new IT efforts will run into problems if the enterprise doesn’t take care of its legacy/core systems and infrastructure too — so don’t forget to protect your supply lines.