Alex Beraskow
With four decades in the IT business behind him, Alex Beraskow has seen the information Technology industry grow exponentially. However, he is not convinced it has grown up. In fact, says the founding partner of IT/NET, “IT is still in its infancy.” During a career that began with IBM in 1969, Beraskow has held executive responsibility in five consulting firms since 1980, and added an MBA and management consultant accreditation to his advanced engineering degree. He started IT/Net, an Ottawa-based technology and management consultancy in 1992 and still spends about 50 per cent of his time doing billable work.
Beraskow believes that the world is still trying to figure out how to capitalize on Information Technology. “I think we’re at the stage where we’re still struggling with how to manage it,” he says. “It is the most transformative power we have ever seen.”
As proof that information technology is still what he calls a ‘sunrise industry’ – it remains a vibrant part of the global economy, even in these difficult economic times. As proof that information technology is still not a mature industry – “We have situational analyses but no big unified theory of managing all aspects of Information Technology,” he explains. “There is the maturity management model from Carnegie Mellon. The COBIT and ITIL processes try to get it, but there still seem to be no guarantees. So how do we manage successfully in this industry?”
Not all IT projects are the same, Beraskow says. “The majority of projects we get involved in change the behaviour of people,” and by definition, that means Information Technology is really all about business transformation. There is always unpredictability. In a variation of the ‘herding cats’ meme, he thinks organizational transformation is less like a super tanker trying to turn in a narrow harbour, but more like directing and coordinating the movements of five thousand rowboats. IT personnel are always caught in the middle, he says. To manage their way in tight circumstances, he advises the technical team to negotiate a business compact with their client groups. “The basic compact is, ‘these are our mutual responsibilities and accountabilities’,” he says.
