Managing Data

IT Strategy: Be Yourself; Know Yourself; Know your Competition

Have you seen different IT strategies around software development and service? Maybe in your career so far you’ve worked at many different companies. Some of us have worked at technology companies; where the success of the company is 100% based in technology development and service while other companies consume technology to help run their business initiatives. Strategies of Success are also different based on the type of company and the business sector in which the company competes. 

One guaranteed approach to failure is when a company acts different than it is. Guess in a way that is also true about people. If a start up company makes business decisions like it is well established with a proven stream of revenue then it is setup for failure. Same is true for a well established company with a proven business model making strategy decisions like it is a start up company.     

Remember the old cereal commercials with Mikey? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLQ0LZSnJFE

In this you can see two different strategies. One is “try it”. Regardless of any concept of good or bad or right or wrong, it is presented to you, give it a try. On the other side we see, Let Mikey be the prover.  Let him take the risk and cost and effort and we will watch and see. While he is testing it we could even discuss how Mikey’s results might help or hurt us.

If your company nets billions of dollars in revenue per year stop running your IT department like a start up. What this looks like is making software churn into a art form or allowing your development organization drive your data strategy. Data is the New Economy and for many reasons your short sighted development organization working on sprint number nnn should not be leading your data management.

Analytics based on opinions is a bad plan. Just as bad as basing actions on bad data. Data Strategies should not be based on Agile development but on Master Data Plans.