Why does a 30 minutes IT task take six days to deliver?
A task comes in Thursday at noon. The work on the task is done 30 minutes later, including a coffee break.
The task is delivered the following Wednesday evening.
Now, why does a 30 minutes task take six days to deliver?
Why does your IT department wait to deliver a task until a few days after it is done?
I’ve seen multiple times that a task is completed in a few hours but first delivered after a week because the development department doesn’t want the business to think that this is a normal speed of delivery.
Background
A well-functioning IT department invests most of its time in infrastructure, productivity improvements, and paying down technical debt.
Those investments result in productivity gains when it comes to business tasks.
Therefore, a seemingly huge task can be accomplished very fast.
It is not because the task was small. But because the IT department has spent a lot of time on productivity improvements.
If the business doesn’t see investments in productivity, the IT department hesitates to deliver a task quickly.
For the IT department, it is a matter of self-preservation.
- If they deliver a task sooner, the expectation is that all similar tasks can be done as fast.
- If all business tasks are delivered quickly, the implication is that IT may be overstaffed.
Top comments (2)
Another reason behind this delay is the importance of thorough testing. A well-functioning IT department understands the need to invest time in infrastructure, productivity improvements, and paying down technical debt in order to gain productivity gains in business tasks.
I 100% agree!
My next blog post will actually touch on that.