John Woods

UK, West Midlands.

IT Consultant

As a 'techie' who is keenly aware of the business, commercial and customer issues, I am increasingly aware that the failure of many IT projects is largely due to the fact that the 'bizzies' (it's about time they had a derogatory label) know almost nothing about the technology they try to sell, deploy and manage --- and more importantly, they seldom appear to think this lack of knowledge is any problem.

By the time someone like me encounters a project, it has already been overpromised, underspecified, and is usually so firmly stuck in the original inappropriate design that there is no way of fixing it.

Of course I respect business acumen when I see it --- my immediate bosses are a case in point: they can do things like resourcing, planning, selling, and management far better than I could. And they respect the fact that I can do design, analysis and programming better than they can. Further up the tree, however, business people disparage the techies a bit too much. We probably couldn't deliver projects without them --- but they most certainly couldn't deliver them without us.

I'm sure Gartner is right that we need a new breed of techie. But we need a new breed of bizzie, as well.