I’ve been seeing things lately that make the old software company CEO in me want to start screaming, “Change, or I’ll get someone else who can actually do your job.”

What has me so riled, as I visit the IT shops of my clients, is a lot of wasted energy. People are assigned to projects, sometimes for years at a time, that are just fantasies.

Who gets the blame for this foolishness? There’s enough to go around for both the business and IT.

I see long lists of projects that are officially under way but have no funding — and no plan for funding. Despite that lack of a key ingredient — money — periodic meetings are held, minutes are published, studies are done.

In one case I know of, four IT people are tied up for the third year in a row on a project that still hasn’t made the cut in the corporate plan.

The business wants and even needs this project. But the corporation needs other things more, so it waits. No progress is made, but everyone looks busy. Make-work maintains the fantasy that this project will someday matter enough to be funded. And maintaining the fantasy is all it does. None of the work being done will cut the project’s time frame should it ever receive funding; it will all need to be redone later.

Read on at ComputerWorld.

[Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post