The 10 Commandments of Information Technology

I started out in the banking industry, and transitioned to the IT side of things about 15 years ago. At the time, a good friend gave me a little article entitled “The 10 Commandments of Information Technology”. It was a simple little article, and I found it interesting as I was trying to navigate this world of three letter acronyms (TLA’s) and hype cycles.

Recently I came across it again. Although it has to be 20 years old (my copy of the the article is undated), I still found it useful, and realize that it has shaped a lot of my thinking as a Gartner analyst. I am reprinting the list here for everyone’s perusal. I would give credit to the author but I do not have that information available.

The 10 Commandments of Information Technology (My comments in parenthesis)

1. Remember, this is a business (isn’t that the truth)

2. Talk to the user (that’s a concept. Problem is, often we don’t know who the user is)

3. Understand your customer’s business (often they don’t even know that)

4. Use the vendor’s knowledge (I have often commented that you are not buying software, you are buying the vendor’s best practice library)

5. Training costs are not discretionary (I often hear clients that are off schedule on CRM projects say that they can make it up by cutting training. Great….)

6. Develop a staff with a mix of business and technical skills

7. Management issues are always more important than technology issues (the three P’s of IT…people, process and politics)

8. Make every contact with users a public relations opportunity

9. Spend time on strategy (wish more people realized that one)

10. Have a good time (especially in this market)

Good stuff. Not rocket science, but sometimes it helps to refocus on these sorts of things.