Enterprise Architecture tools abound. Are tools really neccessary to the objective of asset optimization?
Like children and toys, IT professionals and tools are inseparable. Let’s admit it, we love our tools. Life looks up the moment a new software package is on the horizon. Life is worth living again when it is installed.
It is often this love of tools that lands us in trouble. We forget the purpose behind the tool and get engulfed in its functions and features. The tool drives the process, often after the process has been optimized. So without an objective our strategy is meaningless. Without an optimized process our efficiency is compromised. The tool is front and center and an end in itself. Check mate. Game over.
Long before we lose, however, we lose credibility. Our “business” counterparts can see our obsession and with it the propellers on our head. The trust in our judgment evaporates and with it, our meaning and use to them and their objective of maximizing business value.
Granted there is tool envy. Business people cannot operate the tools. They hide their inadequacy and the inferiority complex by marginalizing us. But the fact remains that they are not off the mark. The fact remains that our obsession with our tools has given their irrational thought process meaning. They have won in this game of organizational politics. Business is always on top of the pecking order because IT is not recognized as “business” and business is what matters.
But there is a far more negative consequence. A team that does not trust each other is bound for disaster. The much celebrated “business and IT alignment” is at best a prayer. The results are an IT capability that keeps people employed and the business functional but not competitive. In the end neither the business nor IT has won. The team loses to anyone who has the will and the aptitude to overcome this simple hurdle.
To some of you it might appear that in one fall swoop I have laid the blame for all IT related ills on our love for tools. I haven’t. I have just articulated what others have referred to as ‘technology for technology’s sake.” And that does not produce business value. Period.
So love your tools but before you jump head first into tool evaluation ask yourself: is a fool with a tool is still a fool?
