The MakingITclear® Newsletter

July, 2003

Volume 1, Number 4

In this issue:

1. Featured Article: What does folding a suit have to do with IT?
   
2. MakingITclear, Inc. news
   
3. Quotes of the month

Featured Article

What does folding a suit have to do with IT?
by Harwell Thrasher

Like many of you, I travel a lot. Some of the travel requires me to wear business suits, and I’ve had to learn how to pack a suit coat so that it’s wearable when I unpack it. Years ago I learned the secret, but it recently occurred to me that the secret of packing a suit coat can be applied to Information Technology as well.

The secret of packing a suit coat is not to avoid wrinkles, as you might think. Instead, the secret is to make sure the wrinkles end up in places where wrinkles won’t be noticed.

Why does this relate to IT? Because it’s a lesson in perfectionism and prioritization. We all want our systems to be perfect, but we know that we don’t have the time or the budget to make that possible. So the secret of having our systems appear to be more successful is to make sure that the system limitations end up in places where the limitations won’t be noticed.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Then why don’t we do it? Think about the typical everyday user of one of your systems. For online systems (web or not), what screens does that person spend most of their day using? For batch systems, what reports does the person use the most? Have you focused the majority of your systems improvement effort on making things better for these most common uses of your systems? On improving their usability? On improving their system performance and reliability? That’s where the productivity payback is, because that’s where most of the business labor goes: into the systems that are used the most.

But a common trap in IT is to get distracted by the so-called “corner cases,” the very uncommon situations where due to a certain combination of variables, weird buggy things happen in software. We tend to spend an inordinate amount of IT dollars on fixing these problems, “removing the wrinkles,” when we might be better off in some cases just moving the wrinkles to where they won’t be noticed.

Got a low-importance system that requires periodic down-time for maintenance? Don’t waste money on replacing the system with something that doesn’t require down-time—just schedule the down-time for a low-use time of the week, and let the users know. They won't care if they don't use the system much.

Got a software system that won’t properly handle a few extremely infrequent but bizarre combinations of variables? If it’s not a critical situation, then put in a workaround (e.g., suspend the transaction in question for manual intervention) instead of wasting resources on something that only happens once in a blue moon. Sure it’s a “wrinkle,” but who will notice!

The type of person who is attracted to the IT profession tends to be a perfectionist. That can be a plus sometimes, but it means that we always want to deal with 100% of a problem. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t need a 100% solution to a few problems as much as it needs 80% solutions to more problems.

When there’s not enough time or money to solve 100% of a problem, it’s usually better to focus on the 80% of the problem that matters the most to the most people. You can’t avoid wrinkles, but you can make sure they end up where they won’t be noticed.

And, oh by the way, if you haven’t learned the secret of folding a suit coat yet, click here to see my instructions.

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Harwell Thrasher works with companies to simplify their IT strategy, thereby making IT more focused, more cost effective, and more valuable to the business. See more on the web site about how MakingITclear, Inc. can help you make your IT organization more strategic.

Send comments on this article to newsletter@makingITclear.com. The best comments will be published on the web site.

News

Harwell recently spoke to the University of Georgia Terry College of Business Executive MBA Program on "Things about Information Technology that I Wish I Had Known 30 Years Ago." The presentation revealed common IT issues that aren't usually known outside IT, and some ideas on how to deal with them. Response was good from the largely non-IT audience.

Watch for an upcoming e-book on this topic on the MakingITclear™ web site. And if you are interested in having Harwell speak at your company or event on this topic or on other topics relating to IT strategy or technology due diligence, please contact Harwell.

Quotes of the Month

In keeping with this month's topic, here are some appropriate quotations from the MakingITclear™ collection. Use them in your presentations to emphasize critical points.


"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed."

Attributed to Bill Gates


"The goal is not to win every game but to win more than you lose, and if you do that often enough, in the end you may find you have won it all."

Harold S. Kushner


"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

Peter Drucker


"'Companies should be looking at the way to improve their IT systems while spending less on IT. Most companies spend too much and get very little in return."

Larry Ellison, Chairman and CEO, Oracle Corporation


"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

Bill Cosby