My plan for today was to write more about the “Business-IT chasm” but I came across a great blog post written by Jorge Camoes that reveals the business perspective of this divide. There is nothing better than the first hand experience:
IT will try to change your project, naturally. Try to avoid the “security bomb” (their favorite). You know how poor their expensive BI toys are, and you should know what they can and can’t do with them. Minor concessions can earn you some points. When they tell you they can’t implement your core ideas be prepared to fake genuine surprise, compare costs (again) and emphatically say that their options clearly don’t meet the organization’s needs.
My suspicion that business has limited ability to influence the electrical engineers is demonstrated by this quote:
Pissing off the IT department is one of the most enjoyable games in corporate life, but be a gentleman and don’t make them look stupid. They don’t usually have a good sense of humour and take their quest to conquer the world very seriously. If you really want to implement the dashboard, don’t make it an island if you can avoid it (connect it to the tables in the IT infrastructure, instead of copy/pasting data).
Here is the link to the full post.
