Information Technology Insight

I.T Optimization « Information Technology Insight

 I.T. Waste

What is it that Security, Change Management, Configuration Management and all of those other quality controls have in common? They’re overhead – waste. It’s true. Think about all of the time, effort and money that is spent in the information technology (I. T.) world in our efforts to make sure things are done right.

What do most security people spend their time doing? They are constantly working to make sure that nothing’s done to open security holes in the I.T. environment. They perform audits, scans, evaluation of new projects and impact changes to the infrastructure. All of this is done in an attempt to keep other I.T. professionals from implementing vulnerabilities. Why? Because the rest of us techies can’t be trusted.

Think about Change Management. Change Management is the process of ensuring that any changes to the infrastructure are properly vetted to ensure that no adverse effects to the environment result. Various specialties are all involved in the process of evaluating these changes : Business Continuity, Security, Configuration Management, Finance, etc… Why? Because bad things could happen if we don’t keep a close watch on everything that goes on.

The same thing is true of Configuration Management and most all of the other “oversight” functions often associated with running an I.T. shop. Why is this important? Let’s consider what Lean Six Sigma (LSS) would have to say about these functions. LSS defines waste as many things… one of which is anything that is required to be done because of a “lack of robustness of a process”. How much of the current work of I.T. would be encompassed by that definition? I would suggest that most I.T. work outside of design, operations and maintenance would be defined as waste by LSS.

So, let’s consider for a moment why (or whether) all of this “wasted effort” is necessary. In general, I.T. managers (and customers) don’t trust I.T. professionals. They don’t trust us to do our jobs in a way that “assures” the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information that we manage. I think that most other techies out there would probably agree with that statement. Question is: Do we deserve to be trusted? I think that most of the distrust is deserved and is our own fault.

Let’s consider why we as I.T. professionals exist in the first place. Do our employers pay us because we have a particular skill? Or because we’re able to administer the latest cool box out there? Nope… They need us because they build widgets. To build widgets, they need ready access to accurate, and in some cased confidential information. That’s it – period.

The dot-com boom of the late nineties probably did as much as anything to harm the image of I.T. professionals today. Computer geeks were in high demand and took full advantage of the situation. These young companies spent venture capital like there was no tomorrow; much of it on infrastructure. Much of wound upon auction sites after the bubble burst.

Are we really that much different today? For all of our great new technologies and acronnyms, have we really increased the percentage of the I.T. spend that actually contributes to the production of those widgets? In some cases we have due to the adoption of ITIL (and it’s cousins) and Enterprise Architecture. For the most part, however, I think that we still spend far too large a portion of the I.T. budget on stuff that Lean Six Sigma would call “waste”. As I mentioned earlier, those include many things that we all hold near and dear : security, configuration management, audits, management and other quality controls. Again – anything that doesn’t contriute direct and measurable value is realy just waste. That waste may be necessary for some reason, but it’s still waste.

Is it time for I.T. to begin to really focus on the “Leaning of I.T.”? I would suggest that it’s time we begin the development of a new dicipline in I.T. that focuses on reducing the amount of waste in the I.T. budget.

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