Humour

The Oddfather (part II)

T A Balasubramanian concludes his account of a CIO’s therapy session to help reduce the maddening IT-business chasm

Bobo Jitter, the troubled CIO of Bazooka Company, continues his session with Dr Don Jong, also known as The Oddfather, who is a specialist in the treatment of technology-induced psychotic conditions.

“So you feel Fin Fina, your CFO, has put a lot of pressure on you? Unfair pressure, if I may add. But tell me from your side, Bobo, why is it that you tend to be, how do you say, not comprehended?”

“Like you said about medicos, we take a lot of risks, Doc. At some point in the life of every technology project, someone has to decide which technology to use, and that someone is me, the CIO. The risk is that the chosen technology won’t work for the
application.”

“Why is that?”

“The same reason why the same medicine may not work for two different patients. We try to cut the technology risk by using the same technology that someone we know has verifiably used to solve a similar problem of the same scale. But it’s a gamble, you know.”

“I can see that. What else troubles your head, Bobo?”

“Not having the right skills, Doc. This is a big one. Sometimes we’re like GPs faced with a complicated cardiac case, and we don’t have a cardiac surgeon with us. We’re at risk when we do not have the technical, project, and managerial skills to complete a project we undertake.”

“Well, a GP would obviously call in a cardiac specialist…”

“That’s what I would too, if I had the budget for it. But put yourself in my place for a minute. Fin Fina is busy squeezing you with all he has, so you would try to get by with what you have, attempting to meet burning needs while putting off longer-term issues. You throw up your hands, openly admit that you do not have the appropriate skill in the appropriate technology, so you select an inappropriate, or at least imperfect, technology instead. For example, you may say: we’re a Cobol shop, so we’ll probably do the application on the mainframe. ”

“Isn’t that like a GP attempting cardiac surgery with a kitchen knife?”

“Exactly, Doc. It’s not that drastic, but yes, you have the picture.”

“I see many problems with this approach, Bobo.”

“So do I, Doc. The first difficulty is that this often kills the project, since an under-resourced project is almost impossible to do. The more insidious problem is that by delivering a lower-quality solution in the wrong technology I wind up with the equivalent of a Dracula in my hands. And Fin Fina would love crucifying me if the monster I created were to keep having breakdowns, sucking up more and more maintenance costs.”

“Dracula, eh? What are the other ways in which you feel that you’re out of sync with business?” says Dr Jong

“You’re asking for a big list, Doc. Among other things, as a CIO, I sin in the following ways (here Bobo pulls out a little pad from his pocket and reads aloud): pay more attention to technology trends than business needs, overpromise and underdeliver, ignore unhappy users, or just come up
with a solution that does not address a problem—or worse still, addresses the problem half-way.”

“Maybe you could boil this list down to two nuggets, Bobo. Unrealistic expectations and poor communication. You know, there’s a joke we have about a plastic surgeon and this patient who wanted a new face because she thought her existing face was unfashionable. So here’s how the chat goes:

Patient: “You comprehend I need a new face, Doc.”

Surgeon: “So you told me, but I don’t know what new face you want.”

Patient: “Before we start, I want to know how long it’s going to take you to do it and what it’s going to cost.”

Surgeon: “It depends on exactly what you want me to do.”

Patient: “That’s going to depend on how long and how much.”

“Which goes to show how some plastic surgeons do roaring business even if they end up creating some Draculas due to budget and time constraints. Projects can get far more loopier than this.”

“I can see how well you comprehend my loopy job, Doc. Businesses assume that they know, and communicate what they want, and we technologists are supposed to figure out how to give it to them. In reality, however, business needs, such as those that Fin Fina comes up with, are often driven by the technology available.”

“You’re telling me? We psychiatrists were called witch doctors before Freud came along and invented a whole new form of shamanism that sounded much more sophisticated than abracadabra and mumbo-jumbo. Though I sometimes think you CIOs might be getting reduced to this jittery state because the jargon that you spout is still practically all mumbo-jumbo. So when you start these long sermons about Web-enabled data integrity being compromised by scalable components in the OOPS, it would take a very brave Fin Fina to interrupt your flow,” says Dr Jong, scribbling on his notepad.

“Well, we all have jargon, Doc. Hardly different from your field. Psychosomatic aberrations with overtones of schizophrenia, you might say, nodding gravely, but would I be any wiser? The question is: how do I get Fin Fina on my side? How do I learn the murky rules of business and still make IT bend and twist to produce the numbers that Fin Fina expects to see?”

“Make him an offer he cannot refuse,” says Dr Jong, stroking his chin with a Brando-like drawl.

“Ah, I was expecting that, Doc. But what do you mean by that?”

“Build projects from the money angle right from the start, Bobo. You don’t have to become as rapacious as the Merchant of Venice, but what if you went to Fin Fina with a profit figure as the starting point for that outrageous Web-based CRM initiative? Tell him how much extra money a happy customer can pull in for Bazooka.”

“I can’t do that, Doc.”

“Who says you can’t? Speak the speak he speaks. Make up a figure, Bobo. If he doesn’t know any better, he will have to listen to you, even if he does so grudgingly. He can’t contradict you, obviously, because he doesn’t know enough to do that.”

“That sounds like deception to me, Doc. You’re advising me to take advantage of Fina’s ignorance by fibbing?”

“Voila, you comprehend! You are now ready to walk across the IT-business chasm, my friend.”