Years of managing, studying, developing, consulting on, and using information technology have taught me the realities of using technology to help generate business value. Here are ten of these realities:
- Technology doesn’t manage itself.
- If you let technology manage you, you lose.
- Implementing a technology based solution without understanding the costs is a big mistake.
- Don’t let technology vendors dictate your business strategy.
- Customers care more about whether your products or services help them than they do about what technology you use.
- Just because you adopt a new technology doesn’t mean the users of your old technology will disappear overnight.
- Getting rid of old technology isn’t free.
- If you’re not in the technology business, you probably should leave developing new technology to others.
- Just because a technology is not new and shiny doesn’t mean it won’t continue to be useful.
- Many technology based projects are mostly about business and process change, not about technology.
Can you think of more?
- Jim MacLennan has Five More Realities for Driving Business Value from Technology (this links to his blog). My favorite: “Automate a mess and you have an automated mess.”
- Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D. is a technology management consultant located in Alexandria, Virginia. Contact him via email at ddmcd@yahoo.com.