Ten Realities of Managing and Using Technology to Generate Business Value

By Dennis D. McDonald

Years of managing, studying, developing, consulting on, and using information technology have taught me the realities of using technology to help generate business value. Here are ten of these realities:

1. Technology doesn’t manage itself.
2. If you let technology manage you, you lose.
3. Implementing a technology based solution without understanding the costs is a big mistake.
4. Don’t let technology vendors dictate your business strategy.
5. Customers care more about whether your products or services help them than they do about what technology you use.
6. Just because you adopt a new technology doesn’t mean the users of your old technology will disappear overnight.
7. Getting rid of old technology isn’t free.
8. If you’re not in the technology business, you probably should leave developing new technology to others.
9. Just because a technology is not new and shiny doesn’t mean it won’t continue to be useful.
10. Many technology based projects are mostly about business and process change, not about technology.

Can you think of more?

• Jim MacLennan has Five More Realities for Driving Business Value from Technology (this links to his blog). My favorite: “Automate a mess and you have an automated mess.”
• Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D. is a technology management consultant located in Alexandria, Virginia. Contact him via email at ddmcd@yahoo.com.