Worry When Only GOOD Projects Are Being Funded…

By jrichard • August 25, 2009 • Filed in: Business Growth, IT Management

A worthy reminder of a common situation:

“They hired me to help them create a new data/web/email/IT strategy, but now they don’t actually want to DO any of the things I recommend. I’ve given them statistics and logic, but they won’t listen to reason!”

You can be the smartest person in the room when it comes to IT, but a real technology leader doesn’t just know what to do, she knows how to get it done. And getting it done means helping your leadership and staff understand and embrace the changes that will inevitably follow.

-Holly Ross, Executive Directory – Nonprofit Technology Network

The value of an IT project must be obvious outside of the IT dept or there is NO business value. It makes no difference how convinced the IT department is of the value. The value of the outcome of an IT initiative is determined by its alignment with and contribution to underlying business objectives. No more, no less.

Best practices, technical elegance, and reducing the workload on the IT department are not, in and of themselves, justification for IT projects. The most effective way for IT to get budget (and be treated as a peer, partner, and collaborator in the business, incidentally) for any project is to stop assuming that a project is intrinsically valuable to the business just because it’s valuable to the IT department.

And don’t be surprised if alignment alone isn’t enough. All business decisions are about considering opportunity cost. If you don’t believe that is the case in your situation, than either you’re wrong (about the value of your project versus all other alternative investments) or you did not get your message across in an effective way to your management team and/or colleagues.

To be fair, there is another possibility: Because business is about making judgment calls – and without the benefit of hindsight – there are no rules and, other than legal stipulations, no right or wrong answers. Plus we all have our own (not always apparent) biases. The only thing that matters is what actually turns out to be successful in the end. Even the definitions of “success” and “the end” are open to interpretation though. :-)

Hence, reasonable, intelligent, and experienced people can (and will) agree to disagree about all manner of resource allocation decisions. That’s just the way it is.

I will leave you with this surprising, but highly rational tidbit. It is found within the most successful organizations…

It’s (usually) a great thing when good projects are left unfunded — it means that better projects ARE getting funded. I only start to worry when mediocre projects are getting funding — because it usually means the organization is lacking the imagination, expertise, and innovation necessary to come up with better uses of limited capital, management capacity, and staff time. (And lacks the leadership to fix it and/or hold out for more attractive investments).

Whenever this happens, it’s time for an intervention and some serious soul searching. :-)