During my interview for the company for which I now work, I wasasked, “How would you create an IT strategy?” That's easy becausewe're not a technology company, we're an insurance company. Thereis no “IT strategy,” just an IT element of the businessstrategy.

I've been a part of initiatives driven by IT that weretechnology for the sake of technology. For example, an “AS/400 Javanew core systems” project was great technically, but didn't solve apressing business problem (result? FAIL). On another project, wewere building some amazing components using very cutting-edgetechnology. The only problem is that we weren't delivering businessvalue (FAIL).

Now before you walk away from this blog post thinking I'm acomplete failure in life, I've learned a lot from those failures.Most importantly, IT is a business support function first and a technology function second.The IT cart can never come before the business horse.