IT provides an essential service to all organisations, and requires of all its practitioners a selfless, generous, and often patient, approach to support and improvement. All too often colleagues feel that IT professionals are “superior”, “dismissive” or just “too busy”. This is, of course, dangerous as it can create an environment in which it is difficult for any team to integrate with others to the degree which achieves the highest value return for all stakeholders.
Key to understanding how Information / Technology (and these should always be regarded as two different “streams” within any business) can provide great value into an organisation is acknowledging that all those involved in representing these functions need to deeply and intimately understand the needs of the organisation and all its stakeholders.
Due to human nature organisations always run the risk of individuals implementing solutions or improvements which they either are interested in or represent the lowest barrier(s) to implementation. The “right” solution is rarely, in actuality, the easiest, cheapest, most established or fastest ones.
But truly understanding the needs of all stakeholders Information / Technology professionals can ensure they approach challenges and opportunities from the most informed perspective, which will, in most cases, also ensure they can start looking for the correct solutions from the start of any project.
In reality the “best” solution must be arrived at by considering multiple metrics; cost of implementation, ongoing costs, fit, ease of use, efficacy, interoperability, sustainability, maintenance requirement, longevity, etc. The only way to appraise each of these accurately is to understand their impact on an organisational scale, as opposed to myopically focusing on their impact on a single individual or function. The “toughest” solution for IT to implement or maintain may, in fact, be the best solution for the organisation as a whole.
There should be no “I” in “IT”, because the solution you should be seeking is not one which suits “you”, it needs to deliver for “us”; the organisation as a whole and all its stakeholders.