IT Schedules & Business priorities

IT schedules are extremely difficult to predict and plan. This is contradictory to how business operates - with plan and procedures. A schedule that is too aggressive or too relaxed would have negative impact on optimum progress. An overly aggressive schedule would lead to technical decisions made to fit the schedule rather than technical constraints, which eventually will hit the schedule sooner or later.

A relaxed schedule would make IT community work at a sub-prime level and hence have a negative impact. From pure technology perspective a relaxed schedule is better than an aggressive one as though being more expensive it is actually predictable. An perfect schedule is impossible to predict.

A way forward to get IT work done on an optimum pace is using Agile. With agile a long plan is not defined hence the IT delivery works on best possible pace, but then IT cannot tell business what it can deliver in long term. Now this makes things very difficult to business as without predictability it is very difficult to operate any business.

Business wants IT to be agile and be able to turn around things quickly, they also want IT to be cost effective, but on the other hand they also want very high predictability and certainty. These are contradictory requirements and like having the cake and eating it to.

But generally this is what happens:
- Business wants IT to deliver some business requirements
- IT would give a relaxed plan
- Business for obvious reasons would want it much earlier
- IT would agree for an early delivery but would fail to deliver
- Business would blame IT, but IT would say "I told you so"
- Eventually the IT delivery would take much longer that it should with much more cost and with many compromises

How do we solve this never ending story
- Use agile as delivery methodology (XP/Scrum)
- Business to take the bitter pill that uncertainty is a way of life with changed business and technological scenario
- IT to take the bitter pill that there are not permanent or perfect designs and architectural purity is only good for "Over the beer chats".
- Stop talking and start working