Dear Bob ... I've just taken over as the new CIO for a company that's on the edge financially. We aren't about to enter bankruptcy, but we're only barely profitable, and every dollar counts. Looking at my IT department, most people would think everything is running well. Projects complete on time, systems stay up, and end-user satisfaction is high. I'm not so sure. Over the past three years, under my predecessor Dear Bob …I’ve just taken over as the new CIO for a company that’s on the edge financially. We aren’t about to enter bankruptcy, but we’re only barely profitable, and every dollar counts.Looking at my IT department, most people would think everything is running well. Projects complete on time, systems stay up, and end-user satisfaction is high. I’m not so sure. Over the past three years, under my predecessor’s leadership, IT modified the core code of our most important application so extensively that upgrades are no longer an option for us. A lot of our effort goes into maintenance that under other circumstances would be provided by the vendor at a much lower total cost, and even the customizations themselves don’t appear to have much real business value, although to be fair, they’re all features business users asked for.Am I nuts, or is our high level of “customer” satisfaction a sign that things are seriously wrong?– In a quandary Dear Quandaried …Are you nuts? Beats me – I’m not a psychiatrist.I can say with confidence, though, that what you describe isn’t a symptom. It’s something different: A less-common result of not having a strong IT governance process. What usually happens when there’s no governance process in place is that IT’s budget is fixed, and with no organized business process to decide what does and doesn’t get done, IT leadership has no choice but to set the company’s priorities. The result: Dog pile on the rabbit, as Bugs Bunny used to say. Everyone blames IT for not getting to their requests.In your situation, it appears the checkbook was open. What wasn’t allowed was to turn down a request. I’d also guess your company has a strong “internal customer” culture, which means collaborating to develop architecturally sound alternatives to requests from the business also wasn’t allowed.All of which puts you in a difficult situation: If you try to change things it’s unlikely anyone will leap to your defense, as you’ll be reducing IT headcount while turning down requests from the business. The good news is, there is a solution, which is, as you might have guessed from the diagnosis, to institute a strong IT governance process. That is, you need to work with the CEO, CFO, and other top executives to put a framework in place for the business to collect business change proposals (remember, they’re always about business change, never about software delivery alone) and collectively decide which ones are worth doing.It’s up to you to incorporate an architectural perspective into this process. It isn’t easy to do this, as architecture is one of those subjects that causes eyes to glaze and bladders to weaken. But it can be done: Cast the subject in business terms, by showing how bad architectural decisions might be expedient, but create a debt to the future that gets paid with a high cost of interface management and an unnecessarily high cost for software upgrades.Accomplishing all of this will require serious persuasion. The good news for you is the company’s tight financial condition. It should help you get their attention.– Bob ——– Technology Industry