Kill Your Weak IT Projects Now | E-Oasis Alerts

Blaine Berger of E-Oasis (@eoasis for you twitterheads) wrote this article back in November and I’ve gone back and re-read it several times in the months since then. It’s still as relevant now as it was the day he wrote it.

Almost every company of any size has IT (Information Technology) projects at various stages of completion. Many of these may have substantial resources dedicated towards them and yet they wander in the desert of incompleteness. Can you afford this?

Too many projects carry on via shear inertia. Project Managers and business leaders need to have the courage to ask the difficult questions when no one else will:   Does the business case for this project still hold up?  Would we be better off stopping this project and redirecting the resources somewhere else?  (Or go for the gusto and ask “Why are we even doing this project?”)

You may ruffle a few feathers but that’s only because people don’t like having the spotlight turned on. It’s the right thing to do.

As Blaine says:  Kill your weak IT projects now. It may be painful, but it’s long overdue and you know it.

In the last several weeks we’ve heard plenty about the Big-3 US automakers, how they are failing, and why they think they need government bailout monies.  There have been some well thought out articles detailing why we should let them fail, arguing that only through the protections of bankruptcy law can they truly get out from under the burdens that have made them fail.  

Jack and Suzy Welch’s thoughts are good, but I think former POTUS candidate Mitt Romney really nails it in his assessment for the New York Times

I love this section from Mitt, and the last sentence in particular.  That’s everything that’s RIGHT about Sun over the last 5 years:

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

Sun has done the right thing here and just need it to start paying off!  We have such great products now, way ahead of our competitors who didn’t invest in R&D after the dot-com bubble burst.  This is our time.  I just hope our Volume Drives Value, community based strategy catches on before it’s too late!

Go Sun Go!