Peter Wilson, first assistant commissioner (ATO technology) at the Australian Taxation Office, told ZDNet Australia that his whole thrust in this role was about making everything project based, as well as transparent. "[It] is about completely and utterly supporting the business paths of the Office, of measuring our success only when our customers are successful," Wilson said.
Wilson is responsible for the running of the IT infrastructure which supports the ATO, including issues around architecture, strategy, professional development, budgeting, and the range of projects the ATO has for building new capabilities.
He evangelises the importance of running IT on a project basis, so that tech departments can see what's going to be done when, and can recognise the milestones of projects. "I like to turn everything into a project, have a plan for it, have milestones so you can measure performance, have budgets associated with it."
Although Wilson admits it can sometimes be "easier said than done" to run everything as a project, he is enthusiastic about the benefits for IT professionals who manage to get this right.
"If you're going to achieve business outcomes by certain dates you've got to do very rigorous planning to make that happen," he said. "You can not project manage this stuff by the seat of your pants--you've got to have rigour, you've got to have defined process[es], you've got to have defined things you're going to do by certain times."
"The other thing about it is unless you do that, you'll always come to a point when various projects will converge on each other and start competing for the same resources. You'll get to the stage where you'll get 10 cooks in the kitchen all wanting to use the stove at the same time. And you can't do it."
But what if unexpected projects crop up?
Wilson agrees that they always do, and that it's then a matter of finding a way of working around this.
"Either turn them into a project or divert resources to make it happen, and that may impact on the project you're already running," he said. "They are the realities of life--there'll always be things that crop up that will cause you to go and reschedule. But if you've got plans in place, you can work out the impact of doing that. If you're going to pull a resource off a project that is going to have to do something by a certain time, if you've got plans, you're going to see the impact of pulling that resource off."
Making sure that the business unit supported by an IT division achieves the benefit they expect is also important, according to Wilson.
"Other people need to be able to see what you're doing and when you're doing it, so they can ensure what you're going to deliver is fitting in with their plans," he said. "Because I think there is the real risk unless you do that, that you'll get that disconnect [between the business and IT]."
Another large part of Wilson's role is in the corporate arena, such as sitting on various committees. "So, as well as running my business, there is an expectation I will contribute to the running of the corporation in a far broader sense," he said.
However, Wilson doesn't believe that this corporate focus means that he loses touch with the issues facing IT on a day-to-day basis.
While he said that he didn't deal with every problem himself, he got involved when things weren't performing to the service level required. He has meetings with his assistant commissioners once a week, focussing more on the strategic--rather than technical issues--facing the team.
This communication is also something he sees as being important to foster between project teams and the business units they're doing work for.
"The whole aim is for us to work in a very transparent manner and to work as one team. So communications, understanding, meeting together, doing joint planning, sharing plans, talking about problems--all of those things are encouraged at a high level," Wilson said.
Wilson comes to his current position from a background in IT. In the early 1970s he was involved in applications development, and also in managing applications through that decade. In the early '80s he worked in other areas of IT, including operations and systems software. Prior to his current role, Wilson's work at the ATO has included working on projects managing the replacement of IT infrastructure, and also involvement in establishing its electronic service delivery strategy.
2%
4%
