InfoWorld’s cover story is "The
Top 20 IT Mistakes," and
it’s a rogues’ gallery indeed. Amusingly, many are the converse
of another: For example, "botching your outsourcing strategy"
vs. "offshoring with blinders on."
The moral I take away is that many of these are not "IT" mistakes—they’re
people mistakes. Ones like "discounting internal security threats"
are obvious enough; depending on whether you believe Gartner, 70%
of security incidents involving an actual loss are inside jobs. But
others, while less blatant, are still at bottom people issues:
- "promoting the wrong people:" Well, sure; don’t
assume your top technologist deserves or wants a management position. - "mishandling change management:" Change is a constant,
but so is people’s resistance to same. You must anticipate
this and bake it in to your project planning. - "mismanaging software development:" Which most
frequently occurs when frustrated IT managers throw more and more
of the "mythical man-month" at a tardy or delayed project. The
solution instead is to find better programmers; "almost nothing else
matters, really." - "letting engineers do their own QA:" Res ipsa loquitur.
I recommend you read it all—and this goes double for those of
you in the audience who are not in IT management. This
is a devil you need to know.
