Today, my thought is a very cornerstone one… What is the purpose of information technology management as a profession? Obviously the information professional implements, maintains, operates, and manages an organization’s information technology (IT) systems. What is not so obvious is why those organizations use IT in the first place. I think that it is a very good idea to revaluate these fundamental reasons on a regular basis
Here are the reasons why, I believe, organizations move from manual processes to automated ones using information technology:
Reduce uncertainty. In a world where the data comes at you like a New York City fire department hydrant that has burst, we have forever progressed past the point where a human can even consider, let alone evaluate the flow. Turing data into information is now the province of the computer.
Reduce cycle time. Any process that is repetitive – building cars, painting animation cells, or drawing blueprints – can be sped up through the use of IT based automation.
Reduce the cost of creation. Seen any movie lately? All of those CG (computer generated) special effects are excellent examples of products that can be created for a fraction of the price using computers.
Improve archiving. There is a reason why the first computers were used for the US Census. If you want to permanently record anything, you will be far more effective using IT than people. Accurate record keeping is a function that we have turned over to computers.
Mining data. Closely coupled to our discussion of uncertainty reduction, above, you cannot argue that when experts spend their talent and time creating rules for computers to review data with, you can produce knowledge much more effectively. Information Technology excels at filtering huge quantities of data to create context and relevance.
Speeding up decision-making. I know that my computer chess program can play at speeds that I cannot. I am sure that it gets very bored waiting the millions of CPU cycles it must to slow down to a pace that I only lose 9 times out of ten against it.
That is it. I know of no other that is not a derivative of one of the above. I recommend that you try to use these categories to bin your IT challenges at work. If you start the conversation with the fundamental idea of specifying what you are trying to accomplish, you may just find much greater clarity and understanding occurs all around the corporate decision making table.
Here are the reasons why, I believe, organizations move from manual processes to automated ones using information technology:
Reduce uncertainty. In a world where the data comes at you like a New York City fire department hydrant that has burst, we have forever progressed past the point where a human can even consider, let alone evaluate the flow. Turing data into information is now the province of the computer.
Reduce cycle time. Any process that is repetitive – building cars, painting animation cells, or drawing blueprints – can be sped up through the use of IT based automation.
Reduce the cost of creation. Seen any movie lately? All of those CG (computer generated) special effects are excellent examples of products that can be created for a fraction of the price using computers.
Improve archiving. There is a reason why the first computers were used for the US Census. If you want to permanently record anything, you will be far more effective using IT than people. Accurate record keeping is a function that we have turned over to computers.
Mining data. Closely coupled to our discussion of uncertainty reduction, above, you cannot argue that when experts spend their talent and time creating rules for computers to review data with, you can produce knowledge much more effectively. Information Technology excels at filtering huge quantities of data to create context and relevance.
Speeding up decision-making. I know that my computer chess program can play at speeds that I cannot. I am sure that it gets very bored waiting the millions of CPU cycles it must to slow down to a pace that I only lose 9 times out of ten against it.
That is it. I know of no other that is not a derivative of one of the above. I recommend that you try to use these categories to bin your IT challenges at work. If you start the conversation with the fundamental idea of specifying what you are trying to accomplish, you may just find much greater clarity and understanding occurs all around the corporate decision making table.
No comments:
Post a Comment