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May 15, 2003
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"A lack of financial skills among IT staff is not the root of the problem." ~Ingmar Leliveld
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Taking Charge
I noted Rob Preston's column "IT Can Deliver the Goods" (April 17, 2003) regarding a recently completed study of IT portfolio management practices conducted by my firm, DiamondCluster International, with the Kellogg School of Management and the Society for Information Management. I was delighted to see you found it an important topic.
We believe the data supports Preston's view about the importance of IT working closely with other functions and business units to deliver value from IT investments. However, Preston's comments about CIO concerns that their teams lack financial skills deserve some clarification. It's true that the CIOs we surveyed perceive this as a key hurdle hindering successful implementation of IT portfolio management practices. However, an in-depth analysis of our findings clearly reveals that a lack of financial skills among IT staff is not the root of the problem.
We conducted in-depth interviews with about 20 of our 130 respondents to ensure proper interpretation of the data. These interviews showed that the issue is not so much that IT staff don't know what a Net Present Value formula is, but rather how to judge the validity of the underlying business assumptions. That can't be done in isolation. It takes real collaboration with business counterparts and a hands-on P&L context.
In case after case, IT portfolio management initiatives were successful because they overcame the gap between IT and the business. Though it is ultimately a shared responsibility, I believe IT leaders have to take the initiative in the short run, for the simple reason that their business counterparts have proved over the past 20 years that they are less likely to do so.
One of the key lessons we learned in our research is that successful CIOs started with a modest portfolio scope and gradually added new layers of capabilities and sophistication. Having the right financial skills is important. But working collaboratively with the rest of the business, seizing the initiative and taking an incremental approach to implementation are the key ingredients for IT portfolio management success.
Ingmar Leliveld; Principal
DiamondCluster International
ingmar.leliveld@diamondcluster.com
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Natural Split
In response to Lori MacVittie's BuzzCut "IBM, Microsoft Shun W3C" (April 3, 2003), the splitting away of Microsoft and IBM from public standards groups is natural and lets each side do what it does best for the industry--particularly since even large commercial entities must comply with public standards once they're widely adopted.
Standards groups do not allow stuffing the voting box based on sales or even market saturation. In fact, the Sun, Unix and Linux groups now have controlling memberships on most Internet committees since memberships are driven by the numbers of vendors and user groups.
Microsoft and IBM can follow the *nix world lead or get out. And this is a good thing. Large commercial entities should not have any say in public standards. The proper way for Microsoft and IBM to make contributions is through the standards process, where merit has to be empirically proven.
Clay Falter; LAN Administrator
Company name withheld by request
mortree@cox.net
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A Closer Look
I perform in-depth analysis of Web services products at a major telecom and thought Lori MacVittie's article "Web Services: Be Nimble, But Be Safe" (April 3, 2003) was a serious attempt at Web services product analysis.
But her analysis misses some important points. For starters, an integer parameter provides little insight into product behavior. The products get more interesting as the parameters get more interesting, and enterprise systems require very interesting parameters.
Next time, try to simulate something like an order-processing system that passes a collection of orders that each contain a collection of line items that each have a collection of subline items. You might find that some products do not support this structure and that, even in those products that do, development may be more difficult.
Also, one of your highly rated products cannot make the shift from SOAP/encoding to document/literal without rewriting the implementation code. Finally, you will see a performance separation between products and that performance is generally not scalable.
Bryon Donahue
Enterprise Architect
Company name withheld by request
bryondonahue@yahoo.com
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Support Worsens
When was that last IT position Ron Anderson says he held (see "Open Wide, This Won't Hurt a Bit," April 3, 2003)? Tech support is miserable across the board. From the minutes and hours spent on hold to the inane questioning of first-level support to not receiving a timely response--it is normal. From the largest networking firm to the smallest software company, service has slipped into a Third World state. The worst part is when we express our dismay to our sales reps, they look at us like we have three heads. They don't get it, so our displeasure does not readily roll up hill. About the only exception we've seen of late is EMC, for which pleasure we pay a handsome premium.
Darryl W. Malcolm
Director of Information Technology
CherryRoad Technology
DMalcolm@cherryroad.com
Tell us how you really feel. Send e-mail to us at editor@nwc.com, fax to (516) 562-7293 or mail letters to Network Computing, 600 Community Drive, Manhasset, NY 11030. Include your name, title, company name, e-mail address and phone number. All correspondence becomes the property of Network Computing.
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