Are you ready for the recession to end? Sure you are…we all are.
But is your organization really ready for the recession to end? If your organizational scenario is similar to mine or many of our peers, you’ve been struggling through the last few years. You’ve got too many projects, too few people and your budget has been continuing to shrink.
What would happen if the economic slump ended tomorrow and you received an immediate bump in your IT budget? Let’s say your budget for 2010 jumped from $10 million to $30 million for the year.
You’d probably be pretty happy wouldn’t you? More money means more people, projects and technology, right? It also means more fun too – you might finally get to do those projects that keep getting pushed to the bottom of the priority list.
Would you be happy with an additional $20 million for your IT budget. Sure you would. We all would (and I’d be at the front of the line!)
But what will you do with that money? Spend it on much needed training (since you’ve ignored that for the last few years)? Will you use your new found money to undertake the sexy projects or use some of it for the non-sexy infrastructure projects? It’s sort of like day-dreaming about winning the lottery isn’t it? You could do a lot with that extra money, couldn’t you?
You’ve been keeping your teams going full-bore for the last few years. You’ve done a wonderful job of ‘doing more with less’. But what will you do when you have a chance to do ‘more with more’?
Money Isn’t Everything
You’ve got your additional $20 million in your budget and, after many discussions about why/how it should be spent, you’ve decided what you’ll spend it on.
Now you just need to figure out who’ll do the work.
You realize that your current staff can’t do it because they’re too overwhelmed with their current projects. Remember, you’ve been asking them to do more with less over these last few years, right?
So…more money to do what you need to do, but who’ll do the work?
CIO’s and IT groups have been doing more with less for a few years now and some have been doing a wonderful job at it. But IT professionals are overworked.
Who Will Do the Work?
So who’ll do the work you need to do now? Will you outsource it? Bring in consultants to take on some of the projects? Hire contractors?
While these options are all viable, how will you ensure that the work is done properly? What governance do you have in place to manage the extra work? Who will manage and govern those projects?
All good questions…and each organization will have to answer them according to their own needs. But they are questions that must be answered.
Do you know who will do the the work you’ll need to get done in 2010 and beyond? We’d love to hear from you. And if you’re one of those CIOs whose been doing a great job of doing more with less, please share some of your best tips so we can do it, too.
