5. Do understand why a task was done quickly

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.