April 5, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Slippery Slope I think.
Once you break out what each IT service costs, all it takes is a member of upper mgmt to say, "Look what were paying for <whatever service>. Can't we outsource that?"
Once it is said out loud, who wouldn't want to cut costs. The CIO is a great guy, but...........
April 5, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Scary thought. Create for the enemy, weapons you do.
April 5, 2010 at 12:46 pm
mike.styers (4/5/2010)
Slippery Slope I think.Once you break out what each IT service costs, all it takes is a member of upper mgmt to say, "Look what were paying for <whatever service>. Can't we outsource that?"
Once it is said out loud, who wouldn't want to cut costs. The CIO is a great guy, but...........
The problem with outsourcing is that you have to bring it back in-house at some point and then fix it;-)
Yes, it could be a slippery slope. The alternative is that they don't really know the internals of IT, and when belts get tight - IT is the first to go because IT is purely a COST center.
We know that IT is not just a COST center, but the perception is still there.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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April 5, 2010 at 12:47 pm
mike.styers (4/5/2010)
Slippery Slope I think.Once you break out what each IT service costs, all it takes is a member of upper mgmt to say, "Look what were paying for <whatever service>. Can't we outsource that?"...
I think it is a valid question to ask. Maybe an outsourcer can do it faster, cheaper, or better.
In any case, it is better than the typical situation where the business treats IT as a free resource because they don't have to pay for it out of their budget. When the cost is zero, demand will be infinite, and everyone gets upset because IT can't deliver. Cost helps the business prioritize demand to the things that will be most valuable to the business.
April 5, 2010 at 12:52 pm
mike.styers (4/5/2010)
Slippery Slope I think.Once you break out what each IT service costs, all it takes is a member of upper mgmt to say, "Look what were paying for <whatever service>. Can't we outsource that?"
Once it is said out loud, who wouldn't want to cut costs. The CIO is a great guy, but...........
Agree. Good point.
If transparency is the issue, wouldn't man-hours spent or schedules altered be a better indicator instead of "consumption" by individual departments? That's how for instance some IT departments pay for overtime. Anything out of the ordinary that disrupts routine operations would fall under this mechanism. This can be incremental, specific, and accurate to the specific request being made and need not go through assigning every IT cost item to a specific service or department. Presumably that is being taken care of through annual budgeting processes.
April 5, 2010 at 1:06 pm
One cannot assign cost of alll items to specific users -- security comes to mind. In fact, if you asked them, they would probably ask for less.
April 5, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I think it is a valid question to ask. Maybe an outsourcer can do it faster, cheaper, or better.
I'm kind of in agreement here. Outsourcing isn't the slam dunk that it was five years ago. There are enough mixed results, soft ROI and outright failure stories around that no one assumes it's going to be seamless. There's a balance between cost, quality and control, and as professionals we all want to think that it'll favor us. But if business decides quality and turnaround time and SLAs aren't worth what we cost then we have to improve or get out. It's up to us to justify outselves and prove our worth. Companies that can't properly identify that worth are at a real disadvantage if they guess wrong on how to run their IT and end up with an outsourcing that goes badly. It's kind of a Darwinian challenge for the decade.
[font="Arial"]Are you lost daddy? I asked tenderly.
Shut up he explained.[/font]
- Ring Lardner
April 5, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I'm not sure about giving the business options. What's with all these UAT man hours? Couldn't we save money by assuming development will just work?
It's definitely a good thing though to see a breakdown of all costs. But you really need to have all costs. Its no good saying that it took x Development man hours if it also took y Project Management man hours and z UAT man hours.
April 5, 2010 at 6:55 pm
CirquedeSQLeil (4/5/2010)
I like the idea of transparency. If you are a consultant for a company - there is a degree of transparency there that is far greater than if you are an internal employee of an IT department. If internal projects were given the same transparency as external projects, I think perspectives on IT would change. Many companies just view IT as a cost center - not a services center. What they fail to see is that the cost is generated by some department in the company.
With enough transparency - you can show IT is often a profit center. Automation and controls not otherwise available, security and auditing requirement covered without a lot of lost time, improving on error rates and catching human errors. One of my longest-standing projects was to find billing errors in a hospital billing system: the first year, billings went up by 16M, and writeoffs went down by a matching amount. Not being afraid to frame your work and show the value tends to help a lot.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
April 5, 2010 at 7:29 pm
What if we as developers or database people had a way to present different options to business people in more clear cut terms.
Interesting idea but reality gets in the way. Humans in control of purse strings will almost always take the cheapest method dollar wise... which is also usually the worst method dollar wise in the long run of things.
My feeling is that business people don't know enough about IT or the tools they use to make good decisions about what IT should be spending it's money on. That's why you have a CIO to begin with. The CIO should be the interface between Finance and IT. To be blunt, a good CIO will protect Finance from IT and vice versa as well as making the two totally disparate departments see eye-to-eye.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
April 5, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Jeff Moden (4/5/2010)
What if we as developers or database people had a way to present different options to business people in more clear cut terms.
Interesting idea but reality gets in the way. Humans in control of purse strings will almost always take the cheapest method dollar wise... which is also usually the worst method dollar wise in the long run of things.
My feeling is that business people don't know enough about IT or the tools they use to make good decisions about what IT should be spending it's money on. That's why you have a CIO to begin with. The CIO should be the interface between Finance and IT. To be blunt, a good CIO will protect Finance from IT and vice versa as well as making the two totally disparate departments see eye-to-eye.
Again, all explanations of options to non-IT staff should be in terms of business risk, business benefit, business capability (or lack thereof), time and money.
Business people are generally quite able to make good decisions when IT options are explained that way.
April 5, 2010 at 7:45 pm
sjsubscribe (4/5/2010)
mike.styers (4/5/2010)
Slippery Slope I think.Once you break out what each IT service costs, all it takes is a member of upper mgmt to say, "Look what were paying for <whatever service>. Can't we outsource that?"
Once it is said out loud, who wouldn't want to cut costs. The CIO is a great guy, but...........
Agree. Good point.
If transparency is the issue, wouldn't man-hours spent or schedules altered be a better indicator instead of "consumption" by individual departments? That's how for instance some IT departments pay for overtime. Anything out of the ordinary that disrupts routine operations would fall under this mechanism. This can be incremental, specific, and accurate to the specific request being made and need not go through assigning every IT cost item to a specific service or department. Presumably that is being taken care of through annual budgeting processes.
You would be missing all of those costs associated with maintaining 500TB on a SAN requiring outlandish hardware, 24/7 support, warranties, licenses, etc.... In short - you'd only be dealing with a small fraction of the IT cost.
Like David just said: if you can present the options in terms of cost vs benefits, managers should be able to make reasonably intelligent decisions. Present it like any other business decision (with an argument that conveys the value and cost of each), you should actually get support in decisions.
And yes - this takes quite a bit of work, but it does help to secure yourself some allies as well...
And one final little bonus - if people get the impression that you're not afraid to pierce the veil and show to them the why, they're actually a lot more likely to agree with you (you're the expert after all). The CIO does most of the heavy lifting in this, but there are times when he can't do it all.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
April 5, 2010 at 8:27 pm
david_wendelken (4/5/2010)
Jeff Moden (4/5/2010)
What if we as developers or database people had a way to present different options to business people in more clear cut terms.
Interesting idea but reality gets in the way. Humans in control of purse strings will almost always take the cheapest method dollar wise... which is also usually the worst method dollar wise in the long run of things.
My feeling is that business people don't know enough about IT or the tools they use to make good decisions about what IT should be spending it's money on. That's why you have a CIO to begin with. The CIO should be the interface between Finance and IT. To be blunt, a good CIO will protect Finance from IT and vice versa as well as making the two totally disparate departments see eye-to-eye.
Again, all explanations of options to non-IT staff should be in terms of business risk, business benefit, business capability (or lack thereof), time and money.
Business people are generally quite able to make good decisions when IT options are explained that way.
My feeling is that business people just aren't equipped with understanding the difference between a common business risk and an IT related business risk and shouldn't be the ones making decisions when it comes to IT options. I've seen where IT is actually part of the Finance department... I think it should be the other way around. 😉
That notwithstanding, I agree... it is necessary to make them understand so the CIO can get the necessary funding for his/her department to actually do the bloody job they're supposed to do. I guess it's all a part of the checks and balances necessary to keep spending in check. I've just not seen a CIO worth his/her salt needing those kinds of checks. Most ask only for what is absolutely essential to the business' successful near future.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
April 6, 2010 at 4:59 am
My employer moved to Agile development about 15 months ago. One of the real benefits we see is the greater involvement and communication between 'the business' and IT.
The product owners (ie 'the business') are fully aware of the various technical options and the tradeoff between time, functionality and quality. Incremental releases are now seen as a way to gain market advantage, rather than an IT plot to delay functionality. Developing using Scrum teams has prompted investment in our release process and other infrastructure to cope with reductions in sprint duration.
Although the backlog is never empty, the business managers are enthusiastic about having real control over priorities, and that IT is delivering what the business needs in the timescale they want.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
April 6, 2010 at 6:33 am
I agree with Ed Vassie above. Done correctly, "Agile" can really have some very strong and long overdue benefits to the business. I'm a strong advocate of correctly done "Agile" methods especially because of the communication it brings between business users and IT.
Done incorrectly, however (usually because of incomplete or bad requirements), it turns out to be a nightmare of rework and sometimes full blown redaction of code. I've seen this happen and it's because a lot of folks mistake "Agile" as "not having to have a plan". 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
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