Unmet Expectations

In a survey of IASA members conducted by the industry organization and Robert E. Nolan Co., nearly nine out of 10 respondents vouch for the value of IT, but almost 40 percent find the performance of their own IT shops lacking, citing performance as either fair or poor.

Rod Travers, senior vice president of Robert E. Nolan Co., is surprised by the low ratings, since in his view as a management consultant, there are more accepted management practices in place in IT departments and there is more transparency. “Practices are becoming much better on the IT side with companies subscribing to CMM [capability maturity model] practices or project management institute methodology,” he says. “In structure or in practice, the IT folks are improving their management practices. That’s a positive, because historically IT was viewed as a black box and you never knew what was going on in there.”