René Schröder in the interview with Silicon Valley Europe

When IT finally delivers impact instead of tickets - René Schröder in an interview at Silicon Valley Europe

Why do so many IT projects fail even though everything technically works? Why do teams deliver features on time—and yet end up with frustration among departments, customers, and management? The upcoming interview with René Schröder at Silicon Valley Europe addresses these very questions.

With over 20 years of experience in IT organizations and digitalization projects, René Schröder is one of the voices that directly addresses the core issues of modern IT structures. His approach is deliberately provocative: The main problem for many companies is not technology—but the broken collaboration between IT and business departments. When requirements are “thrown over the fence,” service providers work in isolation, and IT acts only as a control authority, exactly what many companies experience daily emerges: endless coordination, features without benefit, declining acceptance, and an IT that is seen as a cost center rather than a strategic partner.

In the interview, René Schröder discusses why classic metrics like velocity, tickets, or story points often miss the mark—and why companies need to learn to measure effectiveness instead of activity. With his developed WERT³ system, he shows how collaboration, communication, accountability, and real value creation can finally be measured. It’s not about new tools, more processes, or additional meetings, but about one fundamental question: Is IT really working on the right things?

The discussion also takes a particularly interesting look at current developments around artificial intelligence. Schröder warns strongly against simply accelerating inefficient processes with AI.

We also talk about his current book “E-Mails über den Zaun werfen ist keine Kommunikation” (“Throwing emails over the fence is not communication”), which is currently attracting a lot of attention.

The interview promises clear words, practical insights and numerous impulses for IT managers, managing directors and decision-makers who want to transform their IT from a mere implementer into a true co-designer.

Silicon Valley Europe: Mr. Schröder, you say that most problems in IT projects are not technically driven. Where exactly do you see the actual causes?

René Schröder: At the interface between IT and the specialist department. This is the most unspectacular place to look — and at the same time the one where 80 percent of the problems arise.

In the last 20 years, I have seen hundreds of projects in which everything technically worked. The software ran. The architecture was clean. The team was competent. And yet, in the end, the result was a problem instead of a solution. Why? Because between “what the specialist department actually needs” and “what IT implemented” there are ten handover stations where something is lost each time.

The Standish Group has been investigating this for decades. The most important success factor for IT projects is not the technology. It is the involvement of users and the clarity of requirements. Both are communication issues, not technical ones.

Anyone looking for technical solutions to a structural communication problem is quickly building faster tools for the wrong construction site.

Silicon Valley Europe: Many IT departments today feel more like internal service providers or “ticket processors” than strategic partners. How did this development come about?

René Schröder: This has happened systematically over the past twenty years — and nobody noticed because each individual step seemed reasonable at the time.

In the 2000s, ITIL arrived, bringing with it a service-oriented approach. IT was supposed to become measurable, with tickets instead of phone calls, service levels instead of gut feeling. At the same time, IT budgets were increasingly viewed as cost items that needed optimization. Waves of outsourcing followed. The IT manager became a supplier manager.

The result: IT learned to deliver on demand. It unlearned sitting at the table when decisions were made about what should actually be ordered.

Today, the CFO complains that IT has no strategy. And at the same time, IT is shut out of discussions about business models. This isn’t a failure of individuals. It’s a structural trap we’ve maneuvered ourselves into together.

You can’t escape this trap by having IT shout louder, “We are strategic partners.” The interface itself needs to change.

Silicon Valley Europe: You often talk about requirements being “thrown over the fence.” What exactly is going wrong in the communication between business units and IT?

René Schröder: Imagine the following scenario: The specialist department writes a requirements document. Sends it via email. The IT department reads it. Has questions. Sends them back. Receives answers—sometimes. Implements what they understood. Delivers. And then the specialist department says: “That’s not what we meant.”

That is not communication. That is throwing something over a fence, at the end of which both sides are frustrated.

The title of my book is not a coincidence: “Throwing emails over the fence is not communication.” Communication means that both sides jointly understand what the other means. That does not happen in documents. It happens in joint conversations where IT understands what the specialist department wants to achieve—and the specialist department understands what is technically feasible, sensible, and sustainable.

In most companies I see, these conversations do not take place. There are only formal handovers. And at each handover, part of the original intent is lost. With five handovers in the chain, little of what you originally wanted remains at the end.

Silicon Valley Europe: Can you give a practical example where everything technically worked—but the project ultimately failed anyway?

René Schröder: There is a classic example I have seen in various forms at at least a dozen customers: the self-service portal.

A medium-sized group of companies decided to digitalize internal requests to HR, IT, and facilities. Instead of emails, a portal. Technically well-built, modern, responsive. A workflow engine behind it. Interfaces to all backend systems. Eighteen-month project duration. Six- to seven-figure budget. Rolled out on schedule.

Six months later, the usage rate was below twenty percent. Employees continued to send emails. HR continued to respond to emails. The portal stood empty in the forest like an abandoned building.

Why? Because no one had asked beforehand why people actually send emails. The answer would have been: because they want personal confirmation that their request has been understood. The portal only provides a ticket number. That’s not the same thing.

Technically, everything worked. From a business perspective, it was a total loss. And no one was held accountable because all parties involved had done their jobs “correctly.” This is exactly the pattern that has been troubling me for years.

Silicon Valley Europe: Why, in your view, do many companies still measure the wrong KPIs?

René Schröder: Because the right KPIs are uncomfortable.

Most IT dashboards measure what is easy to measure: How many tickets were closed? How many releases were delivered? How many employees are on the team? These are all activity KPIs. They show how hard IT is working. They say nothing about whether IT is working on the right things.

The question no one asks—because it hurts—is: Has anything actually improved for the department, the customer, or the business?

Studies on feature usage in enterprise software consistently show that a large portion of built-in functions are barely or never used. Yet IT departments continue to measure how many features they deliver each quarter. It’s like a restaurant counting how many dishes it cooks—without checking how many the guest actually ate.

The right metrics are uncomfortable because they reveal what isn’t working. But they’re the only ones that lead to better decisions. Everything else is just occupational therapy for reporting tools.

Silicon Valley Europe: With your WERT³ methodology, you aim to make IT impact measurable. How does your approach differ from traditional methods like Velocity, Story Points, or KPI dashboards?

René Schröder: The key difference: Traditional IT metrics measure what happens within IT. WERT³ measures what happens at the interface between IT and the business department.

WERT³ consists of five variables that interact in a simple formula. The numerator captures the forces that generate impact: How quickly do IT and the business department actually collaborate? How closely is the customer—meaning the business department or end user—actually involved? How quickly does feedback lead to learning and adjustments?

The denominator captures the forces that block impact: How much friction exists in communication? How many handoffs lie between idea and implementation?

What’s great about this logic is that it makes something visible that doesn’t appear in any classic dashboard. An IT department might close a hundred tickets per week and still have a WERT³ score in the red zone—if the handovers are too numerous and friction is too high. Conversely, an IT department with less output can achieve significantly more impact because the interface works smoothly.

Classic metrics tell you how fast you’re rowing. WERT³ tells you whether you’re even rowing in the right direction.

Silicon Valley Europe: Many companies are currently investing heavily in AI and automation. Why do you warn against simply accelerating poor processes with AI?

René Schröder: There’s a quote that won’t leave my mind: If you automate a bad process, you’ll get bad results faster. If you automate it with AI, you’ll get bad results even faster—and no one will be able to trace how they came about.

The sobering studies on the impact of AI investments are coming from various sources: McKinsey, BCG, Gartner. The message is remarkably consistent. The vast majority of AI initiatives fail to deliver the expected value—not because the models are poor, but because they’re embedded in structures that create the problem in the first place.

Take an example: A company introduces AI-supported ticket classification because ticket volume has exploded. Six months later, ticket volume has risen further—but no one asks why there are so many tickets in the first place. Maybe because the specialist department doesn’t know who to contact. Maybe because the IT self-services aren’t working. Maybe because the requirements were never clearly defined.

AI is an amplifier. It makes what works better. And it makes what doesn’t work more visible, faster, and more expensive. Investing in AI without first fixing the interface buys acceleration into a dead end.

Silicon Valley Europe: What specific changes do companies need to make so that IT and business can once again work together on real solutions?

René Schröder: Three things, in this order.

First: Reduce the number of handovers. Every handover is a source of loss. If seven stations lie between the idea in the specialist department and implementation, you don’t need a better methodology — you need fewer stations. Specifically, this means: The people who know what is needed and the people who know what is possible must speak directly to each other. Not via tickets, not via Excel requirement specifications, but at one table.

Second: Prioritize together instead of in parallel. In most companies, the specialist department prioritizes its requirements according to its own criteria. IT prioritizes its backlog items according to its own criteria. Both lists never meet at a place where it is decided what actually has the greatest leverage.

Third: Report impact instead of activity. Not “We closed thirty tickets,” but “The specialist department can now complete its monthly closing two days earlier.” As soon as you replace one with the other, the conversations in the management meeting change fundamentally.

These are not technical measures. They are organizational decisions. And that’s exactly why they so often fail — because they are uncomfortable.

Silicon Valley Europe: What typical warning signs indicate early on that a digitalization project will fail?

René Schröder: There are four signs I consistently find in hindsight in almost every failed project.

The first: It’s called an “IT project.” As soon as a project is labeled this way, it’s clear that the specialist department expects it to be delivered, not as a joint effort. Business initiatives are called “sales project” or “efficiency project” — and IT is part of them.

The second: The client is not at the table. If the most important stakeholder from the specialist department does not personally attend workshops and reviews, but delegates someone else, the project is not politically secured. In the end, support will be missing — along with the funding, attention, and commitment.

The third: Requirements come as a ready-made solution, not as a goal. “We need a new CRM” is a solution. The goal behind it — “Sales should be able to view customer history more quickly” — is not discussed. Those who buy solutions without checking the goal regularly end up with the wrong one.

The fourth: There are no acceptance criteria from the specialist department’s perspective. “We deliver when it works technically” is not an acceptance criterion. “We deliver when the inside sales team can view customer history in under three seconds and use it without training” is one.

If three of these four signs apply, I wouldn’t start the project — instead, I’d first clarify the prerequisites.

Silicon Valley Europe: What are the long-term impacts of poor collaboration between IT and business departments on innovation and competitiveness?

René Schröder: The direct effects are costly. The indirect ones are existential.

Direct: Misguided investments in software that isn’t used. Delays that cost revenue. Duplicate work because business departments procure their own tools when IT is too slow. This is shadow IT, which in many companies is now just as large as official IT — only uncoordinated, insecure, and without a strategy.

Indirect — and this is the more serious layer: The company loses the ability to develop new business models. Today, business models don’t emerge from market analyses alone; they arise from the connection between business ideas and technical feasibility. If these two worlds don’t communicate, no new ideas emerge. The company optimizes its existing business. Competitors who manage this connection will overtake them.

And there’s a third effect that’s often overlooked: Talent leaves. Good IT professionals want to see impact. If they don’t get it — if they process ticket after ticket without knowing why — they move to companies where things are different. The skills shortage is also a shortage of impact.

All of this happens slowly. Over years. And it’s hard to measure until it suddenly becomes very visible.

Silicon Valley Europe: SMEs often lack the time for in-depth changes. Where should companies start if they want to improve their IT more effectively?

René Schröder: My advice is always the same: not with a major transformation. Start with an honest diagnosis.

Most IT managers I speak to have a gut feeling about where things are going wrong. But they lack hard data to argue their case to senior management. That’s the first step: making the interface between IT and the three most important departments measurable. Not in technical metrics, but in the variables that actually create impact—handoffs, friction, shared prioritization, and learning speed.

This diagnosis doesn’t take six months. Ideally, it takes just a few days. But it clearly shows which two or three areas have the greatest leverage.

My advice: don’t try to fix everything at once. One interface at a time. With one of my clients—a government agency with around a thousand employees—we started exactly like this three years ago. Today, the departments get what they need much faster. And the complaints that used to regularly reach senior management have largely disappeared.

This has nothing to do with a major transformation. It’s about the right people starting to talk to each other—and measuring the right things.

Silicon Valley Europe: Many companies have outsourced external services. How can internal IT still work more closely with actual business objectives?

René Schröder: By redefining and rethinking its role.

What I often see is that internal IT manages service providers. It writes requirements, reviews deliveries, and monitors service levels. It has become a purchasing office for IT services. The problem: In this role, there is no closeness to the business. Instead, it is created with the supplier.

The task of internal IT must be different: a translator between business and technology. The person who sits down with the specialist department and understands what is really needed. Who then works with the service provider in such a way that they do not just implement a specification, but achieve a business goal.

Concretely, this means two things.

First: Internal IT staff need to spend more time at the specialist department’s table. Not in Excel lists with service provider tickets. In conversations with the people who run the business.

Second: Service providers must be tasked with impact, not activity. Not “Implement this specification,” but “Achieve this business goal.” This changes the contracts. It changes the reporting. And it changes who is ultimately responsible for the outcome.

Outsourcing is not the problem. Incorrect outsourcing is.

Silicon Valley Europe: If you could give just one piece of advice to a CIO or IT leader today, what would it be?

René Schröder: Go to your most important business stakeholder tomorrow. Sit down. And ask them one simple question: “If you’re being honest—how well is the collaboration with IT working?”

Listen without defending. Write down what they say. Then go back and honestly consider whether the answer you received is the one you want for your IT.

In ninety percent of cases, the answer is not what the IT leader wants. In most cases, it’s also not what the IT leader expected. The real leverage lies in that gap between expectation and reality.

You don’t need a new strategy. You don’t need a new tool. You don’t need a major transformation program. You need an honest mirror. And then the courage to fix what it shows you.

Silicon Valley Europe: To close: what does the IT department of the future look like to you? What role will it play in successful companies going forward?

René Schröder: The IT of the future won’t be in the engine room. It’ll be at the table.

This means: it is no longer the function that delivers what was ordered. It is the function that helps decide what should be ordered. It is a co-author of the business strategy, not a recipient.

This may sound ambitious, but it is actually realistic. The successful companies I see today have already begun this shift. In these companies, the IT leader is part of the executive management discussion—not because they have the best title, but because they speak the language of business, understand the possibilities of technology—and can connect the two.

What is dissolving is the idea that IT is a cost center to be kept as small as possible. What is emerging is the idea that IT is the central differentiator in competition—and must be designed accordingly.

For people in IT, this means a serious shift. Technical excellence is no longer enough. They must understand how the business works. They must be able to communicate. They must take responsibility for impact, not just activity.

This is not for everyone. But for those who can do it, it is the most exciting role in the modern enterprise.

Silicon Valley Europe: Thank you very much for the information and the very insightful conversation.