IT Is Slow? Not Our Fault

Cubicle Sins: 10 Coworkers Who Drive You Crazy

Business unit slowness. Let me count the ways.

Procurement is where dreams go to die. Some of the times "IT is slow," the trail leads back to procurement. Rules, rules, rules. We can buy anything we want as long as it's from one of the big existing players. But in the tech world, new things come from new vendors. New vendors don't like our sign-up process. One quips to me, how about instead of paperwork, we just walk through hot coals? It would be quicker.

[For more on what makes Grumpy IT Guy grumpy, see Grumpy IT Guy: Finance Wars.]

If procurement is where dreams go to die, legal is where dreams go to languish. How many times have we done projects where everything is goes well ... except the contracts.

We send something to legal, and it is so slow getting something back, I imagine the process like this. They get our contracts for approval in our state-of-the-art electronic approvals system. I bet they print it out. Then they write it out longhand, just to really appreciate every ... single ... word. After which they painstakingly translate the changes back into MS Word. Maybe they re-type everything into the approval system.

I don't know. What I do know is that it takes a really long time and five follow-ups before we get something back from legal.

Even when we do get something back from legal, it creates unnecessary time-suck drama. Our BigCo legal feels that all liability should be on the other party's side. One vendor recently complained about terms that legal inserted: "If there's some data breach five years from now, we can be named for infinite liability?" They wouldn't sign. More delays while we found a vendor that would. Memo to CEO, never sent: Maybe if we were reasonable in our contract demands, projects wouldn't be quite as slow?

One grumpy IT guy at another company told me they don't cancel projects when vendors don't sign with ridiculous terms and conditions, they just offshore with India, because India doesn't care if they have infinite liability ... because by the time they get sued, they will have gone through three entity changes, good luck with your international lawsuit.

Lines of business are no better. We have a great idea. Our contact in the business unit says great idea. Then it goes up the chain of command. Maybe chain of command is where dreams go to die. OK, maybe not all ideas are big great ideas. But the DELAYS are always big. When the answer is yes, after much delay they come back to IT: Implement IMMEDIATELY!

Think agile IT is great? Think speedy IT is greater? But we are not going to get there until everybody agrees to speed up. More agile business is not just about IT.

If the world wasn't changing, we might continue to view IT purely as a service organization, and ITSM might be the most important focus for IT leaders. But it's not, it isn't, and it won't be -- at least not in its present form. Get the Research: Beyond IT Service Management report today. (Free registration required.)