Common questions heard around IT:
Is IT a science? an engineering domain? Is it a source of profit or a deep endless hole for money? What’s the map of job types in the domain?
IT has one of the widest spread of perception about its utility, impact, competences and relevance. This has lead the enterprises to consider it as a necessary illness.
As a result, companies have adopted two main attitudes:
Either they’ve built up an internal IT department, training mostly non IT educated and some IT educated people on their system, in order to create some experts of their own system, based mainly on licensed products deployed by the ‘service’ division on the product provider. Or they outsourced their IT, considering that the responsibility can rely on someone else to support their business process losing all control and flexibility to adapt when business pivots (sometimes thanks to technical evolutions).
In both situation, the ability of the company to count on its IT system to get a competitive advantage is compromised.
Is there a place for a problem solver? Who enables the companies to take the full advantage of the recent concepts without building a dependance with a black box product? Who can help an organisation, focused on the quality of the run to take a step backward and anticipate its evolution? It’s time to think of a new position for IT responsible.
After being the new prophet, with unlimited budget for unlimited gain in productivity, followed by being the golem put in the shelter under CFO responsibility for more rationality in budget usage, and finally being the internal service answering to business needs, IT might be considered as an asset, embodied by craftsmen, that are judged upon their creativity, ability to address the new consumer expectations and capacity to make the tool evolving with and influencing the business ambitions of the company.
Eric Delacroix
Twitter: @Edelax