Jason Slater Weblog

Computer Weekly recently (13 May 2008) ran a short article by Rebecca Thomson “Maintenance holds IT leaders back from board” commenting on a recent survey conducted by CA which examined difficulties IT personnel face rising to Board level because the majority of their time is often taken up dealing with technical issues.

In a small/medium enterprise this scenario is magnified as often there will be very few dedicated IT/IS personnel (or even just one!) who constantly work ‘at the coal face’ with issues at both the front-end of the business (user support, ad-hoc training, implementation, web, remote working) and the back-end of the business (server room, security, software development, backup) whilst trying to juggle strategy, legal requirements, capacity planning, budgets and administrative duties leaving little room for training or career planning . Working in this environment means that no two days are ever the same which makes planning ahead and offering sensible time-scales for projects a complex and delicate task. With this in mind, it is likely that business can fail to recognise and develop employees whose direct technical skills and abilities are required over and above any other contribution they are able to offer.

On the flip side, operating at these broad levels offers a view of the business that is often unique as the processing cycle across various departments and functions is often seen in its entirety. I have always felt that IT/IS are well placed to consider the impact of business decisions as the team often have the benefit of the ‘helicopter view’ - in that they can take a step back and look unbiased at the business as a whole - taking in the bigger picture. Making the board understand the value of this insight is often a challenge as it requires a change of perception from IT being considered as just a user support function.

One of the big hurdles is that unless you operate in a technology oriented company then, especially in a small/medium enterprise, IT can often be seen as a reactive support operation and as such deemed as a cost to the business - instead of being a benefit. Spending time with maintenance issues, both proactive (preventative maintenance) and reactive maintenance (fault finding, repair) takes up a large amount of time and whilst being a necessary function for the smooth running of the operation it can directly impact the value of strategic communication from and to the IT function. For example, if a number of users are having trouble printing out a document then the business will most typically prefer the support person to be fixing that particular issue rather than analysing why the print was required in the first place. Add to that a number of other support requirements that emerge whilst spending time fixing a problem and suddenly another day is gone. Many days can often be spent fire-fighting user demands for support. A particularly tricky problem can easily swallow up a number of back to back days and before you know it - a week has gone. Outsourcing offers a flexible alternative but its drawbacks and often high costs need careful assessment. If users are having trouble printing a document they are unlikely to want to wait four hours for a technician to arrive when they have their own IT department at hand?

One could consider how many users an IT person should conceivably be able to support - is it 10, 20, 100 or 1,000+ and resource appropriately. Once this is established then a suitable help desk system could be implemented and the problem be solved. Of course the answer is impossible to reliably gauge as users have widely differing abilities, priorities, equipment and requirements.

My ethos in recent years, having spent much time fire fighting, has been to try and migrate from the perception of reactive user support to more positive user education and encourage users to help themselves and each other. Replies to support questions have evolved from “what do you need and when do you need it?” to “why are you doing this and what would the alternatives be?”. In this way I hope to instil a sense that IT is not a distant, detached entity that act as “the computer police” but instead are business partners and mentors in the appropriate application of technology to reach business goals. As employees and team members our ultimate goals are often the same - to grow the business and help meet its objectives - however there are many ways different ways to achieve these goals. IT help navigate these myriad options and should be recognised as valid business partners.

Liz Warren in her interesting ComputerWeekly.com article (12th Feb 2008) “Career path: joining the board” offers additional insights into the impact of career progression within IT. Mind you, there is hope as Antony Savvas reports in his article (15th May 2008) “Sainsbury’s IT director promoted to board“.