Last week's IT Manager channel poll on favouritism and setting task priorities within the IT department received a range of responses. Many of these IT professionals called for common courtesy from users, and most believed that the majority of the staff they dealt with gave them this.
As one respondent put it, "at the end of the day it all comes down to politeness and manners". "If people are nice to us, we are nice to them," said the IT manager who wished to remain anonymous. "If they are not nice to us we are not nice to them--that is human nature."
The credibility of an IT department is not a new issue. A Gartner Research note from late last year described the IT credibility curve as a series of levels which ranged from uncertainty through to respect.
The authors argued that each stakeholder assesses IT credibility from a different perspective, and with different concerns. "In essence, the credibility of the IS [information systems] organisation depends on the viewer," they state.
"The CIO and IS executives must not only acknowledge the presence of these perspectives, but also their validity. In evaluating stakeholder influence over IT, IS executives must weigh how each group's views will likely affect support, funding, cooperation and acceptance of the IS organisation."
"The more an IS organisation keeps its focus on internal issues, the less likely it will be viewed as a business partner that delivers tangible business value," the authors said.
"To align its purpose with the enterprise's external view, IS executives--spurred by the CIO--should begin to refocus on service portfolios, pricing, organisational competencies and influencing business behaviours."
According to the Gartner research note, many IS organisations won't be able to traverse the entire path to respect. "Some will remain at levels one through three because of the manner in which they're organised, their management capabilities, and the way that the enterprise continues to use or fund them."
John Roberts, vice president and director of research at Gartner, told ZDNet Australia that a lot of it boils down to how credible the IS organisation is seen by the people within the business.
Roberts suggests IS departments need to do some communication and marketing themselves--educating internal clients about the range of services they provide, in order to move up the credibility scale.
He also encourages IT managers to do a self-audit, and use this to look at what steps they need to go through to become more of a business partner to other departments within the enterprise.
"Part of this marketing exercise has to demonstrate that they're cost competitive," Roberts said, warning that if they don't achieve this they run the risk of having some of the services they provide outsourced.
"The challenge for IS organisations is to make sure they have some sorts of customer relationship positions...explaining to the business why you're doing things."
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