The Healthcare.gov fiasco has the Republicans calling out the Democrats. The truth is both parties have failed national and state implementations of information technology. The bottom-line is large IT projects are destined to fail. They all require what IT companies sometimes call “teething pains.”
Information Technology companies answer has been to add more costs by audits, project management, and other well-meaning but budget-busting activities. Untold fortunes in time and reams of paper are used to document and standardize in single-focused IT projects. The waste is monumental.
In business, you see nothing that is any different. In fact, it is often much worse. In banking, core banking software is slammed in and then after companies “get use to” the new system they do process improvement.
Why is it that IT implementation precedes designing work? Cart before horse thinking is the magical answer being sold in the marketplace. Work design, culture and significant measures of success are ignored. IT staff celebrate hotting the date while workers stuck with using the (poorly designed) IT system are left frustrated and left out.
You can spend far less on IT if before you even talk about IT solutions you understand your problems. If IT was the answer, what was the question? Can you really afford another IT catastrophe? Just because you don’t make talk television, the newspaper or become the joke of internet websites the waste in resources is still present . . . even if ignored.
Understanding your culture that drives your design and the customer-in view of performance should become basic to any work design. And . . . this should come before IT.
Tripp Babbitt is a service design architect. His organization helps executives find a better way to link perspective to performance and enable workers to build and refine their service. Read his column at Quality Digest and his articles for CustomermanagementIQ.com. Reach him on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn atwww.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.
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