Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
other said he was building a cathedral. The second
worker obviously knew the larger picture, knew the
project's objective. (Weinberg's story has a twist — the
second worker gets fired because the contract was to
build a garage!)
Failed Strategies
Incorrect IT strategies can cause tangible harm to larger business strategies.
Poor application architecture strategies can derail larger organizational
strategies by limiting the available options at a higher business level. Poor
execution strategies can cause harm to the bottom line by not delivering
on expectations, thereby making the company miss important windows
of opportunity. Do not assume that a strategic project will always succeed.
Always consider what the impact on business would be if it were to fail.
The question naturally arises as to how a project or IT manager
determines which strategic choices are riskier than the others. One model
that can be applied is similar to the risk model in information security.
Security breaches often are classified by their levels of impact on business:
“it can bring down the company,” “it can interrupt some aspect of the
business,” “it can cause some revenue loss,” “it can cause some inconve-
nience,” etc. One can use such levels to evaluate the impact of the failure
of a strategic application development project.
Reducing Failure
A project might have been strategic when it was initiated. As time goes
by, its importance might shift. Such classifications should be reevaluated.
Organizations tend to give higher priorities and resources to everything
that is classified as strategic at the cost of depriving resources to others.
Similarly, an application that may not start out as being strategic may very
well become so later.
Not everything that one builds software for is strategic, but those that
are have business impacts that are larger than many technical personnel
realize. Great care must be taken in all aspects of such work.
 
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