Fix What Ails Your IT Group: Focus on Information

Blogger: Lyn Robison

Something is not right in enterprise IT. Corporations spend piles of money on enterprise IT, but business leaders do not seem satisfied with the work of their IT groups. There is a simple antidote. A focus on information will fix what ails enterprise IT. Businesses pay for IT systems not because they want technology, but because they want information. If enterprise IT groups would focus on delivering information (instead of just delivering systems and technology), the business would at last be pleased with IT’s work.

Sound too simple? Let’s examine the alternatives.

Without a focus on information, IT’s work on services and architecture turns into activities that benefit IT instead of the business.

Without a focus on information, IT’s business process automation efforts turn into rigid silos that often don’t fit the business processes.

Without a focus on information, the BI systems that IT builds turn into Business Stupidity (BS) that cannot answer businesspeople’s questions.

Without a focus on information, IT agility turns into yet more useless IT systems delivered faster and cheaper.

Without a focus on information, IT’s focus on business outcomes heightens the risk of unemployment for IT people.

The simple fact is that if an IT group does not focus on delivering useful information to businesspeople, nothing else that the IT group does will work.

The place to start is IT metrics. The first step in focusing on information is to establish information quality metrics as the primary metrics by which an IT department measures its work. For guidance on information quality metrics, click here.