IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

4.12. Shaking off the chains of the construction industry

If you are from the traditional school of the client–vendor contractual relationship in which costs and deliverables need to be defined in detail up front, then not surprisingly, you might have some difficulty buying into this particular way of managing demand. There don't seem to be any firm numbers to drive decision-making, and nobody seems to responsible for anything, since everything can change later down the line! You would probably find it unthinkable outside of IT for a customer to approve or reject a project for a building of 'approximately 20 storeys', for which the building contractor would only be able to commit contractually to costs 3–6 months after digging has started. So why should it be any different for IT? Well, there are a number of fundamental reasons why.

The main reason, as we saw in Chapter 3, is because you cannot toss a specifications document to an IT department and basically say 'please do this for me' and get a quote and a delivery date. Also, as we have just seen, the commitment conundrum makes it logically impossible to commit to firm numbers anyway during the approvals process. But there are other fundamental reasons too, as we shall now see.

The construction industry works primarily based on standard products and components, and standard categories of labour, which, by definition, have standard costs. This enables a reasonably accurate cost estimate. While there might be standard categories ...