Susan Cram has this piece in CIO about how IT folks sometimes don't quite get around to eating their own cooking. It tickled my fancy. Here are the 5 headlines.

The Sandbagger: “There is no way we can deliver improvements in time, quality and cost—pick two out of the three.”

The Magician: “Investing in this new technology will transform our capability to deliver IT products and services.”

The Lone Ranger: “IT is our business and we can responsibly invest internally without involving formal governance.”

The Visionary: “I can't say when, but this is going to be big—really big.”

The Hostage-Taker: “If we don't do this, we will sacrifice our future.”

I've met all of these folks at one time or another. Here's my antidote. Always always ALWAYS justify projects based on the following;

– revenue improvement
– cost reduction
– quality improvement
– response-time (of the organization) reduction

The tastiest projects do all 4 of these things simultaneously. Don't forget to go back after the project is done and actually measure the durn thing to see whether it delivered on the promises made.