The great universal truths of IT

These things we know to be true. . .

When you're standing in a queue, the other line always moves faster. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Licking a steak knife is dangerous. And never wrestle a pig: you both get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

According to Aristotle, the value of such maxims is that they bring character to any discussion designed to persuade others. Truisms appeal to every audience because they touch upon universal truths about life.

So having scoured CIO-land recently in search of the great universal lies of IT we thought it fitting to complement that wisdom with some fundamental realities that have also stood the test of time.

Again, we thank our panel of Australian CIOs, who already know that foolproof systems don’t take into account the ingenuity of fools; and that the number of people watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action.

Marc White, Head of IT at Bravura Solutions

1. Users tell fibs
Yes, we do. It’s human nature.

“Users will always say the opposite when something is wrong,” says White.

“If they say ‘no, I have no idea how the case of my laptop ended up like that’, what they mean is ‘yes, having dropped my laptop, I figured you wouldn’t notice and can arrange a replacement’”.

Mark Settle, CIO of BMC

2. You can’t spend enough time with end users.
Even though we can’t be trusted to always tell the truth, those kind souls in IT still know that when it comes to making technology investments pay, they need us as much as we need them.

“In general, IT interacts most frequently with power users in specific departments or functional groups within a company,” Settle says.

“These individuals have a vested interest in making themselves more productive, not necessarily making the average users within their departments more productive.

“So you end up with IT investments that might benefit a tiny segment of your overall user population. Spending time with your true end customers can be incredibly insightful and rewarding.”

Allan Davies, CIO of Dematic

3. IT projects undergo greater scrutiny than other business projects

4. IT delivers many intangibles -- which often cannot be measured -- making our ROIs harder to justify

5. Users don’t take advantage of all the functionality offered in applications

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Angus McDonald, Technical Director, Elcom

6. GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out
For the historians, this term comes from a time when computers were as big as cars. It was coined as a teaching mantra in the mid-1950s by George Fuechsel, a computer programmer and instructor at IBM in New York.

“It astounds me that people still think they can put garbage into a computer and get roses out of it,” McDonald says.

“If you don’t put hard work and good thinking into your solutions they won’t be good enough to solve your business problems.”

Stuart Inskip, CIO of Cognitive Development

7. Quality in, quality out
Inskip agrees with McDonald, albeit with a more positive spin.

“Planning, scoping and market analysis are the most important factors influencing IT,” he says. “If you know everything about what you’re trying to achieve then you can exceed customer expectations.”

8. Making the intangible tangible is one of the great benefits of IT
“Whether it is business information, relationships, reputation or countless other intangible items, IT brings the potential to make these things tangible and provide ways for us to work with, relate to, and understand them in ways we never had before.”

9. IT is creative
“I love the fact that the bulk of what we do in IT is create solutions to business problems using technology. That creativity is fundamental to the industry and is embedded in any IT role to some degree.

Brett McDowall, CTO of Object Consulting

10. Users have no idea what they want -- but they will expound on the issue at length

11. Any technology advance is quickly taken for granted -- and somehow seems a little disappointing

12. IT is critical to nearly every business -- but the budgets keep getting cut

13. IT people know they are at the centre of everything and the business can’t live without them

14. Business people wonder who these strange people are in IT and what they do

Marc Cohen, CIO of Dealsdirect.com.au

15. If you release on a Friday you WILL be working on the weekend

16. If you take on changes or allow ad-hoc requests mid-project for someone, they will still be surprised when you ask for more time

17. Open source is not free

18. If you treat IT as a necessary evil it will never be an enabler

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Nathan Aherne, CIO of Reddog Technology

19. Features and benefits: you can’t have it all
A variation on the adage “Fast, good, cheap -- pick any two”, Aherne says it’s all a matter of balance.

“I have never understood organisations that list the features they want from a technology solution before they consider what is important to their business,” he says. “It’s mind boggling.

“I once visited a medium-sized company whose server had caught fire the day before because it was stuck in a cupboard with no ventilation.

“This company had about 300 staff around the country, and the server which caught fire contained all its files, e-mail, calendars and contacts, and provided the communications infrastructure for the entire company.

“Worse, they only backed up to a single USB hard drive and had never tested if the backup worked. It’s inconceivable that such a large organisation would risk everything for the sake of short-term profitability.

“What’s worse is this company produced the engineering specs for most of the high rises and large developments on Australia’s east coast. For a few weeks I was wary of walking into tall buildings in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane.

"We provided this company with the specs for a solution that could handle a natural or man-made disaster, but it just bought another el-cheapo server and stuck it back in the same room!"

Hemant Kogekar, CIO columnist, former CIO of Suncorp Metway, Citibank and Franklins, now principal of his own IT consultancy

20. Projects take longer than originally estimated

21. IT folks are optimists
Of all technology truisms, is there any truer than this?

Perhaps this is the best place to leave our look at the great universal truths of IT and also draw the curtain on our numbers series.

Yes, IT people are optimists. And just as well, since optimists are healthier and live longer than pessimists. That’s another of the great universal truths of life. . .