Dino Cajic explaining the Organization's IT Problem

IT is a department that exists in most organizations, regardless of the size, or at least within the ones that can afford it. It’s a department similar to HR and Finance in the sense that it touches all other departments. Unfortunately, the IT department is frequently overlooked in project planning. It’s also a department that’s valued when the individual’s issues are prioritized and quickly becomes the problem when projects are deprioritized. What’s the solution to this? We’ll explore that in this article. Is the Organization’s IT problem really a problem?

Functional Teams

Functional teams within an organization tend to focus on their specific departments. Sales will focus on sales, marketing on marketing. You get the idea. Only when there’s an issue is the IT team called upon front and center. It is this repeated cycle that’s actually the problem. The IT team gets the seat at the table towards the end of the project or when an issue arrises. After all, IT is always able to solve problems and they usually solve them quickly. There’s no planning necessary. IT just does it.

That can’t be further from the truth. IT has the “planning to the death” culture deeply engrained within it. These are the individuals that stay up late at night to make sure that business is not disrupted. They have to make the plan and then do disaster recovery planning after that. The longer they’re involved in the planning phase of a project, the better.

Prioritization Dilemma

IT exists to solve problems. They’re there to make sure that everything is functioning smoothly within an organization. When working with the various teams, some projects are prioritized over others. This is by necessity that stems from capacity. I’ve yet to meet a fully staffed IT team that has more individuals than work coming in. It’s just the nature of the business.

Unfortunately, some projects are so low on the priority tree that they might be pushed back for months. Even individuals that understand IT priorities will start to feel frustrated and they’ll voice their concerns to anyone that will listen. This usually starts an escalation technique until they yell so loud that their needs are addressed. This is unfortunate from the IT perspective since individuals are trained that whoever squeaks the loudest gets the grease.

If you stand your ground and push back, IT will slowly start to be labeled as the department that doesn’t work with anyone. Prioritizing those low-priority projects will also cause turmoil once you start missing deadlines for the high-priority ones. One solution to this is to dedicate a small percentage of the staff, if possible, to catering towards low-priority projects. These can be junior developers/system admins and their priority is to take the low-hanging fruit. If the low-priority project is rather large, and requires your more senior staff participation, it’ll just have to be communicated to the team that this will not happen any time soon. A compromise might be to break the large project into manageable phases and have your junior staff work on one phase at a time.

IT Oriented Project Manager

Having a company project manager that knows how to work with the IT team is a gift from God. The company will pull this individual into various projects and it is usually this individual that states, “we need IT in here.” When projects are planned, IT has a seat at the table early on. Even when IT doesn’t seem like they’re necessary, it’s always nice to have a weekly update so that IT knows how far along in the project the team is in and whether resources need to be shifted.

This individual will also train others to direct questions and frustrations at them, and not at IT. Since the various teams do not understand the IT projects within an organization, the only insight they have in IT performance is from the limited interaction surrounding their project. When something isn’t done within a reasonable amount of time, an email is usually sent and everyone is CC’d on it, including the IT personnel working on their project. This approach never works. It just causes more stress and frustration within the IT team.

The project manager should train individuals to contact them. They can then speak with the decision maker in IT to see if there is any capacity to address the issue. It’s also a great time to evaluate the task priorities. If a task is higher in priority, the project manager will know how to communicate that to the IT team effectively.

Weekly Call with Functional Department Leaders

This strategy is all about transparency. The idea is to work together as a company. When teams understand where they fit in the overall scheme of things, there’s usually more compassion and understanding. It’s not that IT is purposefully ignoring you. Unfortunately, your project is just not that high of a priority for the organization.

I normally like to have a timeline with all of the projects listed. Projects are stacked one on top of another. Milestones are outlined and individuals involved are placed underneath each milestone. Showing everything and explaining how their project would impact the other projects usually works. The phrase that’s uttered most often is, “it looks like IT needs some help.”

Conclusion

The IT team within an organization is there to provide service for the entire company. Some projects take higher precedence than others. It’s up to leadership to prioritize those projects and to communicate those decisions back to their teams.

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