Doing EA...I mean REALLY doing EA requires a holistic approach and generally speaking, the starting point state for the IT ecosystem is very fragmented, with duplicate/redundant systems. Sometimes there are silo/standardized technology hybrid systems. For example, up until ~2013, my organization kept and managed two different Configuration Management Data Bases which were running on separate instances of the same platform. The reason for this redundancy was 100% political and as all too often, technical best practice takes a back seat to a high performing profit center who wants all of the autonomy and none of the accountability.So, you may ask...what's the harm? If the business wants to architect their own IT solutions (probably due to a sense that IT is too slow/too expensive, see blog 01) why not just let them? Because you end up with organizations with more hidden silos than NORAD.
"Even though we spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the infrastructure...we we're spending it anyway. That's the fallacy in what most people think. When it's being spent in departments and in divisions the money is being spent. It's just not being seen."The above quote from Charlie Feld is especially relevant. Various departments enacting IT solutions all on their own is not going to save you money...and that's not even factoring in the cost to maintain or fix their "shadow IT" infrastructure. But this situation often arises, because the business may believe they can do it cheaper/better than IT. And maybe the dollar amount IS less in the short term, but it shows very little fore site. Here is a fairly recent example that drives the point home.
A few months back I was responsible for replacing a few generators that are the emergency backups for one of our data centers. It was competitively bid out, I made my selection and then immediately ran into a wall with finance. They demanded to know why I didn't choose the lowest cost bids for the generators. (Some background. my org is huge and makes a lot of stuff, generators included. The bid back from our own company, but different division cam back about 10% higher than an outside bid.)
My thinking was, I was taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another. From the shareholder perspective, the transaction was cost neutral, all internal to the company. But my finance didn't see it that way, she saw it as more money leaving our cost center than was required.
Ultimately it's decisions like this that defeat EA before it has a chance to shine. EA must be championed by executive leadership and the organization must move towards the same goal in concert, otherwise the effort is doomed to failure.
After reading your blog all I can come up with is its much too complicated for a 12 week summer course even if it is EA872.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. A the end of the day, it comes down to how invested senior management is to fixing the problems. All too often, interdepartmental warfare and office politics are in the limelight, with IT and proper technical practices getting caught somewhere in the middle. I've had similar experiences with competitively bid projects; often we are told to blindly go with the low bidder without clearly seeing the big picture. And often enough, I feel like we are saving a thousand dollars now to spend five thousand down the road. Shortcuts and budgetary restrictions will never allow EA to live up to its full potential. Ironically, that might just be why the stigma exists - slow, incompetent IT departments abound.
ReplyDelete"Because you end up with organizations with more hidden silos than NORAD"
ReplyDeleteI like this quote and I hope you don't mind me stealing it from time to time!
Shadow IT is unfortunate, but I understand why it happens. The business needs to get things done, regardless of whether their actions are aligned with the EA or not. If IT is short on resources and becomes a bottleneck, the business will find a workaround. Wouldn't it be lovely if business units and IT could work together to demand more resources from leadership so we wouldn't need rogue IT in the first place?