Regressive IT Vision

I nearly laughed out loud yesterday at a global town hall when the CIO of BMS mentioned that the IT organization would be following a "minimum viable product" approach to IT investment. He is right that it is an improvement the BMS IT. The problem is, once again, BMS IT is about decade behind the curve. Not bleeding edge, not cutting edge, not late adoption, but laggard. He mentioned the move to the cloud. Took 15 years for BMS IT to get there. With the move to centralize IT under finance and micromanage the entire budget it and the platform strategy, it is a return to 1990's. No moves to use new technology to drive down IT costs, no understanding that the new org hand-offs will slow work down, no innovation. It's a return to the order-taking model of IT that was prevalent in the 90's, where IT did IT and didn't really understand the business. Sadly, the IT leadership is the same group of non-technologists and non-scientists who have been there for years. No new leaders. No new ideas. They don't understand the state of the art, so they rely on Accenture and BCG, who are not close to the state of the art either. So IT remains a necessary evil, rather than a game changer. I'm really sorry Giovanni. It could be so, so much more. Chaos to come.

 

Stop whining, learn spell/grammer check and be grateful you have a job.

 

I must have heard a different message at the same Town Hall. We have to do more with less-- the company has to tighten its belt. We have to get better at understanding the business unit & customer needs. We have to use outside standard solutions instead of customizing and owning everything. Seems that is exactly what cutting-edge companies are doing-- STAYING COMPETITIVE. It's not about how quickly we can adopt the latest whiz-bang tech. We are not Google. I respect that our leaders didn't jump on the Agile fad when it first hit in consumer software/gaming-- but there are some (now) proven practices and mindsets we can adopt. A highly-regulated manufacturing industry is a lot different than a gaming company or internet business, so keep that in mind when you bash us for not trying every Silicon Valley fad. If you want to be cutting-edge, you need to step out of corporate IT and work for a pure tech company. Sorry--that's the hard truth.

 

I must have heard a different message at the same Town Hall. We have to do more with less-- the company has to tighten its belt. We have to get better at understanding the business unit & customer needs. We have to use outside standard solutions instead of customizing and owning everything. Seems that is exactly what cutting-edge companies are doing-- STAYING COMPETITIVE. It's not about how quickly we can adopt the latest whiz-bang tech. We are not Google. I respect that our leaders didn't jump on the Agile fad when it first hit in consumer software/gaming-- but there are some (now) proven practices and mindsets we can adopt. A highly-regulated manufacturing industry is a lot different than a gaming company or internet business, so keep that in mind when you bash us for not trying every Silicon Valley fad. If you want to be cutting-edge, you need to step out of corporate IT and work for a pure tech company. Sorry--that's the hard truth.