Tuohy's General Theory of IT

Tuohy’s General Theory of IT

Even though thoroughly employing the (PMBOK) Project Management Body of Knowledge;  attempts to plan without direct technically trained human intervention causes the majority of plans to be flawed and inconsistent results will occur.  This occurs despite many levels of review.  Observation at the physical level will never correctly identify all the possible variables;  because the variables will subsequently appear to become more uncontrollable the more frequently you revisit the planning process from differing perspectives.  Further, changes in perspective change the reality of the situation and therefore change the planning processes.  It was this series of observations and efforts that drove me to form this theory.  

This General Theory stipulates that it is impossible for the observer to review and plan for every possible variable and the most likely faults in the planning will be to the most sensitive variables and those variables will be the most likely to have been un-reviewed since they will not have been learned or experienced by the parties in observance.  This is because IT generally depends on equipment and personnel who faithfully perform their tasks and require little or no attention. Therefore as we apply natural attrition we inadvertently ‘hide’ sensitive or critical components, functions, equipment or people. Further complications arise from the apparent inability of humans to document completely procedures that they perform intuitively.

Therefore, this theory states that it is the ultimate responsibility of the IT professionals to create a strategy that transcends the technology so that as technology changes the information the technology processes continues to perform the business requirements.  This requires a strategic architecture that has identified the core data and all the data that affects or is affected by the core data.