A Strategy for Technology Recovery

Prerequisites

This strategy is not for everybody. It is based on the acknowledgement that we have not yet achieved complete success with computing technology. Information Technology (IT) is predicated on the idea that technology can not only facilitate business but can also enable business to operate more efficiently. While there are examples of this, they are rarer than we suppose. Out-of-control IT costs and rampant project failures tell a different story.

The fact is that technology has not adequately delivered on the promise of helping business. If you too have been frustrated by this failure, then this paper is for you. Specifically, you will want to read on if:

Technology is costing you too much money. The true cost of computer technology is determined not by its up-front cost, but by the long-term operational expenses. Marketing is designed to minimize this crucial fact. Even if the software is free (like open source) it can end up costing you much more than you are prepared to spend. When you add up license fees, training, in-house support and consulting help, you start to get the true picture. And if the technology ends up not serving your business needs, you face a partial or complete reinvestment down the road. In many companies the typical life span for a particular technology is two to three years. Is this how business should be run?

Technology permutations seem endless. Keeping up with technology trends is a full-time job. The key question is: how can you find the truth in an industry that changes on a daily basis? Online magazines and technology news sources post dozens of items a day relating to the introduction of new technologies. The cycle of endless permutations and the cost of following these permutations can drive your business into the ground.

Technology hype has lost touch with reality. The technology world is like the fashion world - it is full of glamour. The marketing departments of the companies that want your business know the power of glamour and have perfected the ability to hype technology in just the right way. This is why you see buzzwords like "enterprise solution" and "ecosystem" so often. Companies are not trying to sell you a tool for your business: they are trying to sell you a concept. Trouble is, with all the hype, how can you determine if a product will truly help you or not?

Technology is too complex. We live in a technological very advanced age. Yet, paradoxically, we seem unable to produce high-quality, sophisticated software that is very easy to use. When was the last time you sat down with software that you could easily guide yourself through? The more complex the software, the more training dollars you end up spending and the more ramp-up time your employees face. In many cases, older technology is simpler and more reliable. Yet you'll never find anyone advising you to use it.

If you too have encountered these problems with computer technology, then we can help. Our business is working with companies to help them recover from the failures of technology and learn to use technology well. Our seminars, training and outsourcing services are based on an understanding that technology can only help your business if it is treated as a tool.

As part of our strategy, we have developed some principles of how to approach technology. We call these the "Five Rules for Technology Sanity".

Rule # 1: No limits, no reality

Anyone in the business will sooner or later hear technology called "unlimited" or "limitless". Here's the truth about that: these are meaningless words. Nothing is really unlimited. A hammer does not have "unlimited possibilities". Nor does a computer. It can do certain things very well. It can calculate payroll taxes and generate employee checks. It can handle five hundred simultaneous users purchasing products on your website. It can take the orders and from them generate pick lists and shipping labels for your factory workers. But it can't do everything.

If we really don't grasp this essential point, how can we not be swayed by false promises of "no limits"? Let's look at a promise from an industry leader:

The right programming platform can expand your enterprise systems' flexibility, scalability, and reliability while limiting development costs. It can protect your IT investments and enable near-limitless growth.

How many factory equipment suppliers say things like this? A forklift is a forklift. A computer is a computer! There is no such thing as limitless or "near-limitless" growth. But if you believe there is, you might be attracted to what this company is offering. That is the point, of course. But most likely you'll also find that far from being limited, your implementation costs will end up going through the roof in a "near-limitless" way.

The informed technology user knows that technology has its limits and knows what those limits are. Email technology can facilitate the exchange of information between your employees. It is not going to offer "unlimited opportunities for true workplace collaboration". It is just email software. Used right, it can enable a specific kind of communication. But don't go confusing it with what is really needed for collaboration: the ability to formulate concepts, articulate questions, make distinctions and above all, to use solid interpersonal skills. These are all qualities of the human mind which need to be carefully developed and cannot be achieved by buying the latest and greatest communications software.

There are two kinds of limits to technology: the limits of the technology itself and the limits of our own needs. As an IT manager, you must be able to differentiate between what technology can actually do and what technophiles claim it can do. Furthermore, you must also be able to tell when a technology is directly supporting a core business process or not. In a layered organization, the further down the chain you are, the harder it is to understand the justification for things. This is not a sound policy. It is crucial that anyone involved in any aspect of a business works with a single mind to reach its goals.

Without the grounding of limits, you cannot recognize when and how technology can help your business. You cannot adequately decide whether or not to take a perfectly good legacy system and rewrite it in the latest "hot" technology.

In other words, without limits you'll be lost. And a person who is lost should not be making business decisions.

Rule # 2: Don't invest without an "Extreme Business Case".

Sure, we all know to create a business case before investing in a technology project. But despite the sacrifice of many trees to this end, huge sums of IT money are wasted each year. Whether you are a CIO about to launch a major IT initiative, or an IT manager starting a small project, you cannot invest any kind of resources without what we call an "Extreme Business Case^TM".

An "Extreme Business Case" is a business case that looks at the extremes. It considers what would happen in both the worst- and best-case scenarios. For example, suppose you want to launch a project for a new website for your company. In the "Extreme Business Case", you must answer questions like this:

• If your business requires financial tightening down the road, will this project be cut in the first few rounds? If so, how do we justify it now?
• How much money do you lose if nobody uses the site? How much money if nobody uses the site for three years?
• Can the chosen technology handle three, five or ten times the projected load? If not, how much will it cost to upgrade or rewrite? Will it be worth it?
• If the website is a huge success, what new technology expenses can occur? Will the website still be viable with these expenses?
• If you lose your website programmers and administrator in three years, will you need to switch to a new technology?
• What is the cost in licensing fees for the website technology components? What is it over five or ten years?

There are many more such questions you should ask yourself in preparing an Extreme Business Case. Obviously, the questions vary given the nature of the project. The goal of this exercise is to identify points of failure that most people don't usually consider. Here's another truth: the smaller the scope of your business case, the easier it is to make it. Some people don't like to see the big picture, almost as if the light of reality is too blinding. These people should not be deciding whether a project is good for business or not.

Rule # 3: If it is not usable, it is not viable

It has long been accepted that technology is hard to use. That's why we hire expert consultants all the time. That's also why companies make a fortune on training and support. But we really should be demanding a whole lot more. Usability may seem too difficult to attain, but without it you'll be wasting your time and money.

Usability refers to more than just the graphical user interface. It also refers to the overall comprehensibility of a technology. Even though technology is complex, there is no reason why it cannot be explained in simple terms. Without the most basic explanation of what something is and what it does, you cannot possibly use it well. Here's a test: take any technology you currently use in your company. Can you find anywhere within the product documentation the following:

• A single page that clearly explains its purpose?
• A single page that explains the general areas of configuration?
• A single page that describes overall what is necessary for maintenance?
• A single page that explains the security options and their use?

You probably can't find any of these. But don't think it is asking too much. I have spent many hours assembling this kind of information on my own for poorly documented products. I've seen just how much better it makes people's lives when they read it. Even technically proficient people need the same starting point that non-technical people do. After all, our minds all work the same.

Many an IT organization has switched to a newer technology on the promise of lower licensing costs. What they failed to adequately analyze is whether the long-term costs were viable in terms of usability. Take, for example, C++. When introduced, C++ and other such object-oriented languages were supposed to revolutionize computing. Dazzled by the promise of reuse and efficiency, many an IT organization happily threw out legacy code and hired a new team of experts to rewrite it "better". How much did that cost in the long run? After sending employees to training and hiring C++ consultants, was it really worth it? Did it enable the fulfillment of business needs or did it just end up being a bandwagon that someone jumped on before finding out where it was going?

The lack of usability in technology affects more than money. There is no measuring the effect on worker productivity that poor user interfaces has. The best quality software is useless if people cannot understand what it does and how to use it well. It is routine for IT personnel to create custom scripts and utilities to make up for this lack of usability. We should be looking at this activity as a gauge of products' viability within IT organizations.

The more time spent in trying to make a product usable is less time spent actually using it.

Rule # 4: Distrust all Jargon

After years of experience in the technology field, we have developed the "Jargon Axiom". This axiom states: "the usability of a product is inversely proportional to the amount of jargon used to describe it."

This is not something made up on a whim. We've spent years slogging through marketing slogans to try to understand what companies really offered. There comes a point when it becomes too much work. Others are finding this out as well. Here's an example from someone trying to use Berkeley DB:

Unfortunately, their site is completely saturated with marketing jargon. "Our customers rely on Berkeley DB for fast, scalable, reliable and cost-effective data management for their mission-critical applications." Great - now what does it do exactly?

The author's question really says it all: what does the software do? Actually, this particular quote is nowhere near as obtuse as others. When it comes to the industry leaders like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, the jargon is so bad that you are left with the impression that their technology solves every conceivable kind of human problem.

Here again it comes down to real-world business needs. If you know your needs, you can ask the right questions. If you don't get the right responses to these questions, then you need to keep looking. And you also have to consider another option: is it legitimate to give up something tried and true for the sake of persuasive jargon? We have seen no cases where it is. This is where the "glamour factor" comes in. Something that is already working is not very glamorous. A shiny new technology trend wrapped up in grandiose promises is. Which will you choose?

If you understand that technology as a tool, they you will value it only when it works. This is the only defense against being swept away by marketing jargon.

Rule # 5: Technology is not magic

For some, technology is a sort of magic: you can take any problem, add computer technology and presto, the problem is solved. If it doesn't work the first time, add more computer technology (preferably the latest and greatest). This is not an approach in which technology is used as a means to an end. Instead, the act of using computer technology is in itself a sort of magical rite that ennobles our lives merely by its execution.

While this view might seem extreme, it is deeply imbedded into our collective view of technology. It is the reason why there are endless permutations in technology. In the technology world there are no parameters to force people to accept that a particular technology has been developed as far as possible. Take a garden rake, for example. I think as a species we've pretty much perfected its design. If there are variations, they take place only within a limited range of possibilities: one manufacture might use a different material or spacing between the tines. But the overall design is what it is and cannot be changed. To put it another way, there is a nature to the garden rake that we understand and accept. It is foolishness to try to force the design of the rake out of the boundaries of its nature: you'll only end up with a piece of junk.

There is no such recognition of "natures" in the technology world. Consequently, there is never the recognition that a particular area of technology has reached its perfection and that we can all stop inventing. The quest never ends. In technology there is no sharp dividing line between innovation and permutation. We seem to have lost the ability to understand when something is done and can be used. The reason for this is that we have lost the understanding that technology is a tool.

It may sound painfully obvious to say technology is a tool, but apparently no one really gets it. In other areas of business, we are not so confused. For example, if you are a building contractor and need to buy hammers for your employees, you simply go buy good hammers. You don't buy hammers whose heads fall off, nor do you buy hammers that are too light to drive framing nails. You buy quality tools that can take the expected use day in and day out. These tools to do not solve every aspect of your business. They do not solve world hunger or give you a reason to live. Nor do they replace the need for the tool operators, your employees. All they do is enable the tool operators to drive nails into wood. End of story.

There is no mystique about technology. It is a tool that must be able to do the job you need it to and stand up to the expected use day in and day out. It must be reliable and long-lasting. You are not solving world hunger or unemployment with it: just a particular business problem.

Conclusion

The "Five Rules for Technology Sanity" is part of a 'reengineering' of the way we think about technology. Technology can be a powerful tool in business. Wielding its power requires a clear and straightforward way of thinking. It is only when you have a practical understanding of computer technology that you can make sound business decisions about it. Without this understanding, it is impossible to navigate through the hype and permutations that permeate the industry.

If you'd like more information on our approach to technology, we invite you to contact us at 800.711.4901 or via email at info@galatea.com. You may also wish to read more about our seminars and consulting services by selecting the appropriate links at the top of this page.