IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

9.2. The IT challenge

It would be tempting to think that IT faces fewer challenges than the rest of the business in adapting to the new model, because they already deal directly or indirectly with most of the 'revelations' in this book. Nothing could be further than the truth – they face more challenges than the business because their whole organization, staffing, skills, compensation and benefits are based on the traditional model.

Unlike the business, who would 'only' (no mean challenge in itself) need to wrap its mind around some new concepts, play a participative instead of a spectator role in projects and introduce a couple of new job descriptions, the IT department would have to more or less re-invent itself, with risk and outcomes replacing much of the traditional security of specs and sign-offs. This would mean telling a lot of people that their job descriptions are now going to change, and that some of the things they were good at yesterday are suddenly going to be less important tomorrow, and that new skills and attitudes are going to have to be acquired through a combination of training and new hiring. The dominant profile of the people who will be interacting with the business, from analysts and developers to client managers and project managers, will be resolutely extrovert and people-oriented. This contrasts with the dominant profile of IT staffers today, which is introvert and technology-oriented. This reality was echoed in a joke told by Gartner analyst John Mahoney ...