Changing the rules - IT is not just about becoming efficient

I have managed a number of projects recently (both web and reservation system) for various travel company clients. They all tend to have something in common - one of the business objectives is to “become more efficient”.

The outcome of “becoming more efficient” is that either the same staff can handle more bookings (such as in the case of call centre staff) - or the staff can be reassigned to other needy departments in the company.

Therefore IT projects can get off to a “sticky start” as people around a company become aware that although they are to be heavily involved in the project (after all they currently run that business process and associated team) - they won’t have such a large team in the future….. IT people have never really judged themselves in terms of seniority in terms of what staff they have reporting to them…. so we can misjudge how negative this can make people feel who are having their departments downsized or pushed for extra performance.

Anyway, the rules are changing now.

Now IT and web people are talking about adding features to websites. Do you want your customers to rate your products? What about putting some social networking style functionality on your site? Wonderful. Lets get on with it……

Except - who is going to moderate this user feedback? Who is going to “ignite” a conversation on a forum - ensuring that users keep keen to come back and get involved in conversations?

So IT departments are now in the job generation exercise. This is something we are not very accustomed to…. and therefore probably not very good at - especially when it is job generation for someone else’s department. It goes against all that IT managers have been doing for the last 30 years.

Now, when you see your IT manager come to talk to you about “a project they have in mind for your department” - don’t immediately think that they want to make you more efficient or replace some of your team with some software or other….. they could just be coming to talk to you about making your team larger.

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