Cost cutting folly.

As in most enterprises, people are the most critical element in any IT project. In projects involving highly-skilled tasks, like IT, it is arguably even more important to get the right people.

People also usually form the entire basis of the costs of a typical IT project - capital expenditure aside. It stands to reason, therefore, that there is a direct relationship between the cost of doing business (the number and quality of the people you employ) and the capability to deliver. When a company wants to cut costs, people are usually the first to go. This, of course, reduces a companies capacity to maintain its service, or deliver new products.

If this all sounds like common sense, it is. At least to most of us.

Royal Mail, however, apparently ignored this simple truth when they cut 30,000 jobs over the past few years. In this article from The Times, Trade Union Amicus claims that in some areas, it has often fallen to managerial staff to make up the shortfall, delivering the mail themselves.

What this does to the workload of managerial tasks is not clear. Who do they get to do their jobs? Or were they under-utilised anyway?