The Human Element of IT

The Domino Effect of IT Personalities

We have finally completed our study into the impact of personality-driven behavior.  While we suspected that dominant personality profiles existed within IT, what was suprizing is how much the common criticisms of IT can be explained by the dominant personalities of IT professionals exhibiting "shadow behavior".  Don't get us wrong, this is not just another attempt to beat up on IT executives.  Rather we see this finding extremely significant as it suggest that the perception and performance of IT organizations can be radically lifted by focusing on the behaviors of a few key IT players.

The bottom-line conclusion is that personality-driven behavior drives the ultimate level of IT-driven value an organization can realize.  This is true as people determine IT management processes and design, develop and deploy enterprise software.  As such IT personalities have a domino effect throughout the enterprise.

The correction of the software binge is underway

We recently posted an opinion article on the ISV Stress Test facing enterprise software companies.  In that piece we included a graph that conveyed some research on the investments levels and productivity benefits delivered by software in the US.  The main point, ROI on enterprise software has been falling since the tech bubble and before the global economic crisis started.  Now software companies with poor effective adoption levels will be faced with a significant revenue growth challenge.

As I have subsequently discussed this issue with a number of software executives and listened to their stories of poor adoption and orphaned accounts I am even more convinced that a significant correction is underway.  It is still true that major software players will continue to get upgrades, business is dynamic and software must catch-up.  But there are other changes afoot, lower pricing, more pay-as-you-go options, more pressure on maintenance services to deliver higher value.

Fundamentally the threshold expectations from customers around the level, nature and value of service they receive from software companies is shifting.  Software companies that can lead their customers to adoption success are going to benefit, others that see themselves solely as product companies run the risk of leaving the future of their P&L in the hands of partners - or even worse their customers!