October 19, 2004
making tech implementations less culturally disruptive (cont.)
In a recent e-mail to me, the unmatchable Evelyn Rodriguez wrote:
Well, I do know a lot about making tech implementations less culturally disruptive — but it cuts both ways — sometimes the business people disrupt the technologists too — they live in their own little bubble. The gurus call this “Business-I.T. Alignment.” I’ve worked in the engineering/product dev side of the house much LONGER than I’ve worked on the biz/prod mgmt/marketing side. Yes, each side loathes the other. I had to go to a new company to start working for the dark side my first marketing role, that is) I’ll write about this one day, but one reason for the increase in outsourcing I.T. is that this way the business people can OUTSOURCE their conflict as far away and as out of sight as possible. They don’t have to actually see those pesky I.T. folks much any more — just throw it over the firewall to India,Russia, Argentina, China, etc. I’m not being facetious.
Maybe your company doesn’t have a tech problem. Maybe it has a cultural problem. Think about it.
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Yup, and trouble is, outsourcing IT may make it hunky dory at home, but it exacerbates conflict overall. Because there is still a join thats now made more tenuous than ever — usually at the requirements analysis stage and the iterations around requirements, end user input and project management.
Unless you have real rennaisance multicultural leftbrain-rightbrain heros bridging this gaping divide youre in deep shit.
You have 2 worlds now that not only speak different figurative languages, they also speak different 1st spoken languages. Common idoms are gone, and the slim opportunities to realize common values by interpersonal relationship ( eg company family picnics) have gone down the tubes as well. The nice thing is, if the heroes dont pull it off, the bus development people can blame it on the foreigners, and hey, look at all the cash were saving.
Let the cards fall. Companies find out their own way out!
Hi John
Agree with what you are saying. I work with SAP, the software company, and getting SAP into a large organisation is a challenge at best, usually because everyone is doing exactly as you describe.
I talk to German developers about issues with the global roll out of banking software, usually to customer people that are also talking a second language. This leaves plenty room for misunderstanding, but also, as soon as you are outsourcing or using an external supplier, suddenly, every decision costs money, usually lots of it, and so the potential for conflict moves to a three axis problem — technical, “business and political”, and also commercial. I have seen quite a few projects where the implementation has been commercially driven by a phase one deliverable that is commercially mandatory, but at complete odds with the long term roadmap that the business needs.
In these circumstances, you end up being the guy that the supplier doesn’t understand, the customer gets annoyed with, and then the implementation partner gets aggravated because they cannot get to the phase one deliverable quickly and cheaply. At this point the word heroism is not totally misplaced, or at least “Liker of nasty infighting.“
This is not just an SAP issue. Any major business change has to have a strong long term objective that will allow senior management, suppposing that they care, to over-ride the lower level.
If they don’t care save your breath and do the minimum, becuase without them nothing will happen.
But to continue this into one of my favourite rants, upper management, especially American upper management, know that they have four quarters to meet this year, and a likely lifespan at at the top of four years to uptick the share options, so don’t look for long term decisions under those circumstances. Some European and Japanese firms still have longer term views, but even they are getting forced into this insane short termism.
In short, this is the way of the future, unless the lawyers take over with Sarbanes Oxley, et al.
“[O]utsourcing IT may make it hunky dory at home, but it exacerbates conflict overall…“
It’s not necessarily logical — but having the work done (not necessarily offshore, could be EDS or IBM or HP that takeover for internal I.T. as well) by a third party just feels like you’ve gotten the problem out of your hair…at least temporarily.
It brings its own set of challenges.
I did say once in an older blog post, god help me if I could find it, that offshoring allows you to fail cheaper. Most software development and/or implementation projects are not rounding successes — but rather than directly address the underlying problems — it seems worth a shot to see if someone else can do it any better and cheaply — elsewhere.