or they were run as undercover skunk works by the business units, which was unacceptable to ITSB. This led to what can be described as a chaotic deadlock.
Attempts by both ITSB and the business units to be flexible in the face of changing
business needs failed, as new business applications could not be rapidly developed, or
existing ones easily adapted to new requirements. Even minor changes to IT were difficult because existing business applications depended on sophisticated workaround
processes implemented by the business units to compensate for functional and performance shortcomings. A small change for IT resulted in large changes to the
workaround processes. The users were revolting against ITSB to protect CEC and
ensure legislative compliance.
IT that is both unstable and inflexible is in the chaotic quadrant of the IT Agility
model. A platform that works for neither proactive development nor reactive maintenance and operations is difficult to change. A “green-field” replacement was impossible for CEC because the business units had no confidence in ITSB’s ability to build new
systems. Even though the existing systems were poor, combining them with the
workarounds did provide legislative compliance. For the business units, moving to an
unknown future without a trusted service provider was unacceptable