Well, it means cutting your costs of course: mean to save money; parsimonious so as to butter parsnips; careful to cut costs; extreme endeavours to even out expenditure.But we need to be careful when we're playing Scrooge. He himself went through a number of different experiences before he got the point. The Ghost of Christmas Past wasn't enough; the Ghost of Christmas Present wasn't enough; it was only with the visitation of the Ghost of Christmas Future that he finally realised what he needed to do.
What's the parallel with the current day hard-pressed CIO? Well, it's all too easy to look at only one way of saving money: cut the budget - that will work; reduce TCO - that will make me look good; eliminate development - we can make do with the applications we have and no-one will notice.
This is slash and burn thinking. It's not Mean IT, it's Silly IT.
We need to think again - to look at the problem from a number of different angles - to examine things through a number of different lenses. So, we can think of various viewpoints that we might optimise:
- Total cost of ownership
- Finance
- Service portfolio
- Service levels
- Service improvement
- Innovation
It's the power of thinking through all of these different views, these "lenses", that means that Mean IT will deliver dividends.
The Ghosts of Christmas had a point: if Mean IT is to mean anything, we need to think of cutting costs from a number of different points of view.
Are you considering these points of view - right now?
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