Article Summary:
A few things in IT remain true, despite the best efforts of marketing hype, vendor salespeople, and trade rag pundits trying to make everyone believe otherwise:
A few things in IT remain true, despite the best efforts of marketing hype, vendor salespeople, and trade rag pundits trying to make everyone believe otherwise:
- The Internet poses security risks. Always has. Always will.
- Users don't understand IT - never have, never will. All they really understand is their jobs.
- No project gets enough time, budget and resources to be done the way it should be done.
- "Free" anything isn't.
- Faster hardware is cheaper than faster software.
- It's up to us to get our money's worth. Caveat emptor.
- The best technology doesn't always make a successful product. Then again, the best technology may not be what you need.
- Some vendors really don't like some other vendors - so much that they're willing to let it get in the way of working with customers.
- If nobody else is trying something, there's usually a reason. Maybe not a good reason, but a reason.
- Faster hardware doesn't solve business problems - unless the business problem is slow hardware.
- Traffic expands to fill the bandwidth provided.
- If you take something away from users, they'll sneak it in the back way anyhow.
- The most powerful influence on CEOs' IT preferences are the people who write for airline in-flight magazines.
- "More bandwidth/memory/storage/processing power than you'll ever need" will last you six months. A year, tops.
- "We've never done it that way before" is a more powerful argument than any cost/benefit analysis.
- IT projects advance or die. Sometimes both. But if it isn't advancing, it's dying.
- What counts isn't how much a product costs when you buy it. What counts is how much it costs before you finally shut it down.
- Functionality isn't the same as usefulness.
- When you just have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Most IT people just have technology.
- It always takes longer and costs more to fix it later.
- The systems that last are the ones you were counting on to be obsolete.
- A good idea is no match for a bad habit.
- By the time your CEO has read about a technology, it's no longer a strategic advantage.
- Ninety percent of a system's cost is still training people to use it.
- IT projects fail. Large projects fail more often than small ones. So if failure isn't an option, you'll never do anything.
- Exactly what you want always costs more than what you can afford.
- Old ideas got that way because they proved useful.
- Data isn't information. Information isn't knowledge. Knowledge isn't manageable.
- The hardest problems get solved last.
- If you can't find the bug in a procedure in 15 minutes, rewrite it.
- Fast - Good - Cheap. . . . .Pick any two.
A.J. Vasaris is a Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) at Value Management Partners, a project, process and business management consulting firm. He consults with organizations to create the optimum value in projects and processes for improving business performance.
A consultant, writer and speaker, A.J. has been published and quoted as a subject matter expert in various business and technology trade journals including the Wall Street Journal, VAR, Consulting 2 Management, Small Business News, and Crain's magazines. You can keep up with his business rants and raves at his weblog - Project, Process & Business Improvement, or contact him directly via email.
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