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Top executives often feel uncomfortable making hard choices about information technology. But when they abdicate responsibility, they set their companies up for wasted investments and missed opportunities.

Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn’t Make by Jeanne W. Ross and Peter Weill

Reprint R0211F

Top executives often feel uncomfortable making hard choices about information technology. But when they abdicate responsibility, they set their companies up for wasted investments and missed opportunities.

Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn’t Make by Jeanne W. Ross and Peter Weill

COPYRIGHT © 2002 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

For several years now, we have observed the frustration—sometimes even exasperation— that many business executives feel toward information technology and their IT departments. Our center runs a seminar called “IT for the Non-IT Executive,” and the refrain among the more than 1,000 senior managers who have taken the course runs something like this: “What can I do? I don’t understand IT well enough to manage it in detail. And my IT people—although they work hard—don’t seem to understand the very real business problems I face.” Perhaps the complaint we hear most frequently from the executives—most of them CEOs, COOs, CFOs, or other high-ranking officers—is that they haven’t realized much business value from the high-priced technology they have installed. Meanwhile, the list of seemingly necessary IT capabilities continues to grow, and IT spending continues to consume an increasing percentage of their budgets. Where’s the payback? Indeed, our research into IT management

practices at hundreds of companies around the world has shown that most organizations are not generating the value from IT investments that they could be. The companies that manage their IT investments