What’s being an IT Pro about?

For me, it’s about solving business driven pains and issues, with our toolboxes of skills that we have acquired over both years and differing assignment. Finding what they really want!

And then do that! Simple you would think, not so … 

The goal for me is to deliver a service that helps my client meet financial, time and growth targets, in short, save time and help them make more money, by keeping existing clients and winning new business…

I believe that is the driver of any requirement for a “Contractor” what the bottom line is!

However, given a sudden change in direction in the project I was working on, it almost seems as if little or no thought has gone into getting the “Contractor” in to scoping Issues and solving THE PROBLEM or providing RIGHT solution @ the RIGHT TIME, which in my book would mean you’re using the correct recipes for success

OH, heuristics and a poorly defined problem will lead to a poorly specified requirement and then an equally underspecified and constrained environment. Results? No time to do it right in first place – but we deploy to put in prod, RESULT? It breaks, it does not do what they expected.

If we were surgeons, anesthetist’s cardiac or thoracic specialists, we simply could not afford to approach the ailing, make an incision, or remove the diseased portion of a person, the way we approach we sometimes approach IT projects…

You know the thing… It’s off, it’s on, we have the budget, we don’t have enough budget, wait a minute what about capacity resources etc.? Just a few of the questions you think a client would ask or know before asking the agency in the middle to relay a list of technical knives and scalpels ALLIED to your previous operating experiences that you must possess.

This then forms the toolset and approach which the client and you intend to use to dissect or implant into the environment. The result, we then suddenly need best practice, due diligence, and CAB! Now we have to find the time to put right but in an orderly and informed manner.

Some questions I like to ask

• ·         How is that affecting day to day ops?
• ·         Conversely what is the effect on bottom line/profit?
• ·         What do we need from the system?
• ·         What will we feed into it?
• ·         How will we mix and match sift, sort and collate
• ·         What useful steps forwards can we take armed with this information?
• ·         How can we be better at what we are good at?
• ·         How can we improve on shortfalls?

However, time and time again we find, a solution has been rushed, cobbled, fudged and then while in prod, ends up being sticky taped until we revisit the cycle again. Guess what we still have not learned…

It’s not the technology that we use, it’s not the business that we are in, it’s our attitude, it’s our willingness to do the tedious discovery work and the tenacity to complete the mundane, and an attention to the details, not minutia, tedious and mundane tasks allow us to get to fun task.

You can’t play in the Wendy house unless it’s been set up, Scalextric is utter pants if still in the box or set up incorrectly. It’s like a bake-off algorithm! Decide on what we are baking, [Goal of our Project] Gather ingredients [Our People, Our Process and Our Technology] follow the instruction for Baking – [Methods Agile Best Practice etc. RTFM!]

Mix them up, [use Methods Builds, Automation, and algorithms. Adopt Project delivery management tools Agile etc. to deliver] Passion and Direction [Commit to task – all TEAM endeavors with the same direction big picture in mind]

Bye for now