Politics in IT Governance and Prioritization

by Bob Benson and Tom Bugnitz, Senior Consultants, Cutter Consortium

Ah, the word "politics" sounds ugly. Yet IT managers always talk about the negative role of politics in making IT investment and prioritization decisions. It would seem that "politics" is something to be avoided, that somehow a more rational decision-making approach could avoid politics.

However, here's another view. While "politics" may sound bad, even venal, it usually isn't. Rather, it's just conflicting views of what's actually important in making IT decisions. This sense of importance is always specific to the individual manager. Manager A thinks what he or she is doing is important -- and it is, to this individual. Manager B focuses on what's important to him or her, usually quite different than what's important to manager A. So when managers A and B yell about what's needed from IT, it isn't politics, it's promoting each manager's own goals. This is probably obvious. However, it really means that IT managers must penetrate the "politics" to determine what's important.

This is the problem with prioritization: the process actually prioritizes what's important to each manager and, by extension, what's important to each individual manager in the governance group. In effect, prioritization prioritizes how important each manager's goals are. It isn't prioritizing IT investments -- it's indicating how important each business objective is (and by extension, how important each specific manager is) and how IT investments should then be allocated to those business objectives as represented by the projects. Prioritizing projects is a surrogate to deciding how important each manager's objectives are. This is particularly obvious when governance and prioritization cross the silos of business functions (e.g., prioritizing accounting and logistics and marketing projects) and the silos of business units (e.g., each product line or line of business.)

To think of this as a "problem," however, misses the point. Any reasonably sized business organization is full of managers with different goals. Of course, one would hope that the company's planning and management processes would sort through each business unit and functional goal. As every manager knows, this isn't often effectively done. So in effect, the IT governance and prioritization processes have to deal with the often-conflicting voices of each and every manager.

Our point is that this is good, not bad. Politics actually reflect that the IT decisions are, in fact, important. We worry when we find clients where politics isn't a factor. This suggests that the IT decisions aren't viewed as important, that IT doesn't really affect what's important to each business manager.

Of course, IT needs effective management methods to deal with politics. As readers of these Advisors know, we put our emphasis on a process that defines each business unit's strategic intentions. We find that this process effectively deals with siloed organizations and managers. We also find it helpful to define strategic intentions for each otherwise separate business unit, and find methods to combine them into an effective governance and prioritization process.

However, the point is more fundamental. We should celebrate diversity in what business managers think is important, and celebrate politics in our decision-making process. This guarantees that business managers think IT matters, that the decisions being made are important to them.

We welcome your comments on this issue of the Cutter Edge and encourage you to send your insights on the market in general to us at BBenson@cutter.com.

-- Bob Benson and Tom Bugnitz, Senior Consultants, Cutter Consortium