The Cult of the Product
If you are involved with government IT you really should read this...
I have just re-read it having enthused about it a few months ago. Herewith a taster...
The Cult of the Product underlies some of the most pernicious problems in this industry. We spend far more on capital expenses than we should, because we’re buying products we don’t need and never use. We’ve built acquisition systems that take 48 months to produce a requirements document because it’s optimized to find products, not solve problems. An “IT strategy” today, or what passes for it, is not much more than a tedious (and futile) process of aligning vendor roadmaps in the vain hope that a new requirement will be satisfied on time and on budget. We spend nearly all our time making product choices, and very little time thinking about how we’d like our IT shops to actually operate.
It's very good. Here's the link again. No shirking now.