In the last few years IT organizations in many industries have been asked to do more with less. This is all a part of the nation wide cost cutting frenzy which started in ’09. Initially this trend was good of course. Costs can be reduces 5 or 10% in any given year. The problem is that the cutting has gone on year after year. The compounded rate of cost cutting has now reached alarming levels.
As the IT organizations near a fragile state near collapse it must be noted that the cuts have not been made evenly across all job roles. Middle and first line managers have been hard hit. In many cases first and second line management roles have simply merged into one position. Spans of control have increased and many of those people they supervise have been outsourced.
Clearly, this isn’t good for the health of the organization in the long run. Training budgets have been cut or eliminated. Hardware purchases have been minimized. Travel expenses have been reduced. These are all investments that pay for themselves and produce a good return. Testing of application code is a case in point. In some case testing has been reduced due to a lack of hardware to do the testing, or a rush to get the code into production.