Review - FruITion by Chris Potts

FruITion by Chris Potts is an IT fantasy novel aimed at frustrated CIOs. Chris tells the tale of a typical IT department caught up in providing IT to the business. After developing the IT teams 75 page strategy document the CIO presents the strategy to the CEO and effectively gets it thrown back in his face. How is a 75 page document of IT expenditure a strategy? And how is it remotely useful to the CEO, or the rest of the business as a whole?

Potts does a good job of identifying the typical IT structural issues. The main problem if an IT department wants to act as a supplier then why don’t they get treated like a supplier? If they are part of the business then why aren’t they embedded in the normal business?

So the ultimate solution in the novel is the IT operations team is placed under procurement, the IT projects team is placed under operations, the Enterprise Architecture team is placed under corporate strategy and the CIO role is effectively abolished. In the novel the CIO becomes the Chief Internal Investments Officer (CIIO), a brand new role that reports to the CEO and is part of the executive team.
So let’s start with the dumbest idea first, the role of the CIIO. For the vast majority of enterprises this responsibility is clearly the remit of the CFO, with the exception of financial services organisations. If the role existed it would be part of the CFO team. In any case who in their right mind would put an IT manager in that role?

The idea of splitting the IT teams into business functional teams is not new, in fact that is how IT started. Back in the 80s these types of structures were common, the rise of the monolithic IT department only really started to evolve in the 90s. And the reason IT departments evolved was because IT projects and operations are complex. IT is treated differently because it is different. Building and running an IT business system is not the same as paying the electricity bill, no matter what cloud vendors try and flog. There needs to be a single point of responsibility for IT service delivery. That is the role of the CIO.

Sure you can run projects and operations separately. You can outsource one or the other, or even both. But if the only point in the hierarchy where responsibility for both comes together is the CEO then you are in serious governance trouble. It the point where they come together is the CFO then you are not much better off. The tradition IT department structure is a bit like democracy, it has its flaws, but at this time it is still probably the least worst way of running IT.

The big problem with this is that simply restructuring the org does not provide any value at all unless you take the next step and completely outsource the whole thing. All you do by restructuring is add complexity and risk to existing operations and procurement teams, who are not equipped to cope with IT, and were probably doing stuff that was critical to the business before they got derailed by IT. So the real question is whether or not to outsource, not to restructure.

Which just leaves us with the Enterprise Architects. Potts’ argument here, and in the next book, is that Enterprise Architecture really should be part of corporate strategy. I am kind of mystified by this solution, if you want corporate strategists you should hire corporate strategist, why try and recycle Enterprise Architects when they are woefully inadequate for the job? The fundamental question here is if the traditional role of Enterprise Architecture adds any value at all, and Potts is really suggesting that is doesn’t. In that respect I completely agree with him. 

So in the end the real world outcome for the scenario presented in the novel should have been sack the CIO, sack the architects, outsource all IT operations and projects, and leave a small IT team in place to manage the outsourcing relationship, reporting in to the CFO. Otherwise why go through half of the pain of an outsourcing style transformation and get none of the benefits?

So ultimately a though provoking and interesting book, but no real solutions.