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This reinforces the view that IT itself may be the better at giving business a straight road to drive down than business pulling IT into shape. Enterprise architects think about these things all the time, and the scope of their task is close to vast. While EA is held to be the hottest job currently, EA projects are also slated for cancellation because of failed expectations. As always in technology and business, there are no magic bullets, everything is a unique struggle.
In the constant pursuit of the latest technology to simplify the enterprise landscape, IT is often tempted to neglect the investments it already possesses. The dean of INSEAD, as quoted by Chris Potts, says:
"...tech people tend to focus on the 'new' - finding a business case for
the 'new'. Very little though goes into the benefit and almost none
goes into the managing of legacy assets." - Valuing IT Assets
Chris Potts in his article is challenging the view that knowing the value of the IT investment is important. This is irrelevant to the main considerations:
"Knowing
the value of IT assets may well be a Good Thing and it sounds like we
should making more effort to do so, but it's not going to tell us
whether they're worth having, and whether we're making the very most of
them. And as IT evolves from being capital investments to services, the
question of asset value is becoming less and less relevant.
"Meanwhile,
this survey notwithstanding, the strategic conversation about IT has
moved on to the next level of maturity - about the value we are
creating from the business changes that exploit IT." - Valuing IT Assets
"IT works not as a servant but as a knowledgable and capable business
partner, suggesting business opportunities that the business may not
have thought of, and taking it to the business and executive management
for funding." - Inside Architecture : Understanding Enterprise Architecture
And software developer Gary Sherman (with Dovetail Software) in a quick comment emphasizes:
"Way too often, we see technology solutions put in place without a good
understanding of the business needs. We must understand the business
needs first!" - SOA: It's NOT about technology
The real value of IT assets lies in how well they work with business. But business itself is often broken, even before the power tools of IT come to enable it. Could this be the underlying quandary that forces many projects to fail?
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