Duplication of Efforts

Although many of these corporations have legitimate staff shortages, there is also duplication of efforts throughout the organizations as highlighted by the issues in Table 2-1 in Chapter 2. When performing these assessments, management will often ask if the final report will recommend additional headcount. Our answer is that only 30 percent of the companies we studied had a real manpower deficiency. Rarely (maybe 10 percent of the time) do we recommend additional resources because of the many problems with these networked infrastructures. Adding headcount to these types of environments will only make senior management look bad because the problems will not go away by just adding resources.

So, how can the CIO determine if there's duplication of efforts? The answer lies in thoroughly understanding the organization and the different operational groups and their inter-related functions. The one-week analysis will give top management an opportunity to analyze the organization and see where overlap occurs, and where there are gaping holes in the support of RAS. The follow-on creation of metrics measurement will help everyone understand how to judge the performance of RAS and its importance to achieving IT's mission.

Outsourcing Is Not Necessarily the Quick Fix

The average tenure for a CIO is about 2 years. This will get worse in the future. Many new CIOs will inherit a disaster (one of these infrastructures). Their first reaction—and maybe the seemingly politically correct thing to do—will be to investigate how to outsource this mess.

CIOs, beware. If you outsource a mess, you'll get twice the headaches in return. Besides, we have yet to see an outsourcing vendor do a good job with client/server computing. What makes you think they can get it right? Like we said, 40 for 40 out there, and no one has gotten it right yet. They have some good salesmen that can promise the world. But words alone will not be the answer. If you're itching to outsource something, then let it be a well-run legacy environment, which any outsourcing vendor can effectively support.

Alternatively, selective outsourcing like the Help Desk or the Network will work. For additional information on outsourcing, please read our book Building the New Enterprise.