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3 Reasons Business Needs Don’t Precede Technology Decisions

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It never ceases to amaze me how almost any conversation about any information technology eventually comes around to the same thing: the need to identify the fundamental business problem that the technology is intended to solve!

Today's conversation centered on cloud computing, yesterday's on enterprise content management, and Monday’s on SharePoint -- and despite the fact that the tools were so different, each of the discussions ended on pretty much the same note:

To get maximum total value from your solution, you need to first analyze your needs and only then choose a provider!

This isn't rocket science, of course, so it was entirely appropriate for a reporter I was speaking with to exclaim, “That makes perfect sense! So why don't more people do it?”

The answer exists in multiple parts:

1. It can take a long time to generate the kind of information that is of the most use, and bosses and CFOs often are looking for answers sooner rather than later.  Consequently, shortcuts are taken, and projects’ success is often diminished at best, or absent at worst.
    
2. Doing this diligence hampers people’s ability to do their regular jobs, and they worry about possible fallout at performance-review time – unless they are lucky enough to be detached from their regular duties and set free to do the work.
    
3. People are often threatened by the notion of change, especially when that change is aimed directly at the functions they perform. So it can be difficult to shake the needed information loose and to reality-test the answers to ensure an accurate picture is being painted.

None of these things, of course, have anything to do with technology; no, they are all functions of human behavior and organizational culture. These things can be terribly difficult to address, not only because they are so fundamental to the way a business works, but because they often cannot even be seen except by someone with an outside perspective.

What this means is you really have to look for possible choke points in your information flow and give the people who live there permission to feel okay about the work you are doing.  It also can be helpful to play “good cop/bad cop” with a boss, colleague, or outside consultant (whom people may be predisposed to dislike) in order to generate the proper intelligence.

However you do it, make sure it's the proper end of the dog that is doing the wagging. The business needs must come first – otherwise the technology you choose, the matter how good is, may not deliver the results you thought it would.

Read more about the concept of “maximum total value” here. 

Comments

3 Reasons no, scratch that, 5 Reasons Business Needs........

Submitted by Bud Porter-Roth March 08, 2011 - 4:51 PM

Steve, good insight into why companies take shortcuts to a solution (Ready, Fire, Aim). I would add the following to your 3 reasons:

4. Business people are not (typically) skilled business analysis when it comes to documenting their processes and the potential for new technology - the old AS/IS and the TO/BE thing.
5. Many companies I have consulted for are not willing to pay for their managers/supervisors/employees to get trained on the technologies and therefore it is difficult for them to do the TO/BE part of the study, which would project the savings and efficiency gaines and etc.

So to break down your statement, "To get maximum total value from your solution, you need to first analyze your needs and only then choose a provider!" the company may have trouble documenting the AS/IS state in such a manner that the technological need is evident and second, since they may not fully understand the technology, it is hard to "choose a provider..."

This is not meant to say that companies are incompetent but sometimes lack the right skill set needed.

As an associated issue, when companies hire consultants to do the TO/BE and AS/IS, the company is rarely "educated" during the process and when the consultant leaves, he/she takes all that knowledge with them leaving the company with a product they don't fully understand.

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