The Undercover IT Correspondent

TITLES AND DEPARTMENTS WE COULD DO WITHOUT

Bring back the good old days, when the longest job title was ‘Director of Operations’

Ever wonder why it is that when you choose software product ABC for your local organization, you’re just a project manager working in the IT department, but if you do the very same job on an international scale, you’re suddenly the Director of Transnational Systems in the Department for Global Technology Deployment and Systems Optimization ?

Here are some tongue-in-cheek examples of outrageous job titles and departments that make us hark back to the good old days when the longest job title was ‘Director of Operations.’

·         Strategic ‘anything’ Director: a politically acceptable staging post for executives with no real work to do, or for those whose posts have been rationalized during the recent merger.

·         Director of X-wide Systems: a person whose mandate it is to put in as many ‘standard’ systems as possible in geographical area X, whether or not they have a business case or actually correspond to country requirements.

·         Infrastructure and Planning Department: what you call an infrastructure department to ensure credibility and an annual budget.

·         Global ‘anything’ Department: a group whose mandate is unclear and whose existence is more or less ignored by subsidiaries around the world.

·         Global Products and Technology Department: a body of technical weenies whose job it is to spend vast amounts of time and money defining ‘strategic’ technical standards from a market of ‘me-too’ products. Their toughest mission to date? Choosing between Navigator and Explorer as the worldwide browser standard.

·         Virtually Integrated Planning Committee: runs the whole shooting match. Staffed by dignified 40-something execs with awesome-sounding titles, this body inspires security, confidence and vision. It can get the CEO to write million-dollar cheques for strategic projects without batting an eyelid. Known in inner circles as the VIP-committee.

·         Macro Business and Management Analyst: IT’s concession to user representation. Usually an ex-user whose ability with technology personifies the saying ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ Work procedures known in inner circles as MBMA (Management by Magazine Article).

·         Area/Regional: options available for ‘line extension’ to existing director positions when the market for such posts is saturated. Instructions for use: simply append level identifier to original title, as in ‘Area Director for …’

·         Director of Enterprise Process Strategy: a new post created when all line extension options have been exhausted (see above), and a company can no longer create any more Strategic Director positions without raising suspicion.

·         VP for Global Best Practices: head of a department that unilaterally decides which practices are ‘best’ for subsidiaries without their consent and without identifying any ‘worst’ practices.

·         VP for Technology Deployment and Systems Optimization: post reserved for someone who can work the words ‘strategy,’ ‘process’ and ‘architecture’ into the same sentence and manage to keep a straight face.

·         Strategic Director of Advanced Technology: head of a department of one. Post reserved since the dawn of computing for nerds with beards who are best left alone to explore solutions-in-search-of-a-problem.

·         IT Project Manager: what kind of job title is that? Somebody get that weirdo outta here!MG

Copyright 1996 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, Mass. 01701.  Reprinted by permission of Computerworld.  All rights reserved.