Had a long conversation last week with two ladies at a large company; both carry the title of Portfolio Manager. Basically, they are IT-background folks who work for “the business” and represent the relationship between their respective business units and IT.

Man, did I get an earful!

A solid hour of (polite and professional) venting about IT’s lack of visibility for the business. Costs, benefits, activities, projects, efforts, labor are perceived as a great black hole. The business receives budget reports (and chargebacks), but has no idea what goes into them, or any way to effectively find out.

The result, of course, is frustration - and seeking out alternatives. In this case, the business units have been buying their own IT, “under the radar” for years.

Now, when a companywide ITAM program is on the table, all of these business-owned applications are a great big black hole of their own - IT doesn’t know what they are, where they are, what their value is, what the risks associated may be, etc.

Frustration all around. How to move forward?

Same as always - one step at at time. First we focus on the wins that are big and obvious, like hardware and software that’s owned by IT. Hopefully we’ll be able to show more visibility into real costs from those efforts, so that the business begins to trust IT (and vice versa) just a little bit. Then we can have a dialog about those busienss-owned apps, and at least assess the size of the question and the nature of the risks involved, and mutually make a decision about how to handle them.

Incrementalism - good word - that’s how we got there, and that’s the way out.

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