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The 27 great universal lies of IT

We asked our hardy band of cynical, battle-scarred CIOs to nominate their favourite fictions, furphies and fables about IT that just keep on keeping on.
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The 27 great universal lies of IT We asked our hardy band of cynical, battle-scarred CIOs to nominate their favourite fictions, furphies and fables about IT that just keep on keeping on.

Like any industry that can trace its roots back more than 50 years, IT has accumulated its share of myths -- those fictions, furphies and fables that just keep on keeping on.

Many of these deceits have been exposed with the passing of time. For example, Bill Gates won’t give you money to forward that e-mail; early adoption won’t put you ahead of the game; and the stroke of midnight 2000 was not computing’s Armageddon.

More recently, we have come to know that Second Life is not the Second Coming; bloggers have precious little to say; and most IT projects fail.

Yet some fallacies remain.

We asked our hardy band of cynical, battle-scarred CIOs to nominate their favourites. They’ve suggested that as we settle into 2010, these gems survive as the great universal lies of IT.

Angus McDonald, Technical Director, Elcom

1. We can fix the cost of a project
“Specifying a fixed cost, timeframe and set of requirements (the iron triangle) leads to pain. It’s a consistent lie told by salespeople -- and believed by customers -- that they can fix all three on any IT project that involves creativity or an aspect of customisation. They can’t.”

2. We know how long that will take
“No we don’t. Really. We can take a guess, and we might be good at guessing, but without actually doing it, we can’t tell how long it will take.”

3. IT people are smarter
“Unfortunately this is not true, and thinking it is true is one of the really silly mistakes young IT professionals sometimes make.”

4. IT people are boring
“Also not true. There is a fair representation of most types of people in IT. Now that doesn’t mean their work is interesting to hear about -- IT professionals can bore you to death as much as any accountant, actor or athlete.”

Allan Davies, CIO Dematic

There’s not much that Davies hasn’t seen or heard across 25 years as an IT professional. However, with some prompting, he was able to keep his list of big lies to four. . .

5. It’s just software

6. IT is a department full of propeller heads

7. CIOs don’t understand the business

8. We just play with really cool stuff

Brett McDowall, CTO of Object Consulting

McDowall needed a little more space but, to be fair, he was attempting to cover a little more ground…

9. I can do this at home; why is it so hard here?

10. I can get this for free on the Web

11. I didn’t touch anything so why doesn’t it work?

12. This vendor will solve all our problems

13. Let’s outsource everything so it will all work properly -- out of sight is better

14. Let’s in-source everything so it will all work properly -- and we can see it

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More about: Bill, Citibank, Dematic, Elcom, etwork, Suncorp, Suncorp Metway
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Comments

1

Andrew

Thu 21/01/2010 - 09:50

Y2k only a fizzer because of the effort

This article is propagating a myth that has been doing the rounds since Y2K. That is that it wasn't necessary. I was around when we did the assessments of what would be broken and saw lists from some Government organisations that would have had 50% of their applications (large adn small) fail. The reason that nothing happen was due to the long hours and resources spent over a period of 3-4 years leading up to the year 2000. I ave somethines thought since then that we should have left 5% of systems to fail so that the general population would have seen what could have happened. Unfortunately the professional pride of doing the best we could has lead the unaware to say it was a beatup.

BTW I am aware of 2 systems that did fail - an ATM network for a UK bank and an FBI system (although we didn't hear about the FBI one until it was fixed!).

2

Steve

Fri 22/01/2010 - 12:33

Y2K fizzer

I'm with you Andrew... I was working at a UK bank in '97 when they started issuing visa cards that wouldn't work (they were set to expire in '00)... this was a *huge* wakeup call. The Y2K project found many areas of code that would not have worked, the bank would've been unable to function. This particular bank knew that it had a problem and spent the rest of the decade fixing it's issues (and still had some minor problems). It seems the non-thinkers in IT beleive that is was a have... Let's see what happens in 2037 then eh? (When integer dates stop working)

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