Week 1: Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn't Make

http://moodle.lsu.edu/file.php/8993/HBR_Articles/Six_IT_Decisions_Your_IT_People_Shouldn_t_Make.pdf

This article states that their are six IT decisions that mangers should make, regardless of their IT knowledge.
1. How much should we spend on IT?
Many companies determine what their IT costs should be by using industry benchmarks.  However, a  better way to make this decision is to determine what your IT department's role will be in the business strategy and base funding on the amount of money needed to achieve that objective.
2. Which business processes should receive our IT dollars?
Many companies have multiple things that they would like their IT department to achieve.  However,  it is important not to overwhelm the IT department with too many tasks or to allow the IT executives to determine the priority of these tasks. Business managers should determine which IT initiatives are the most essential to the organizations success and prioritize accordingly.
3. Which IT capabilities need to be companywide?
It is the job of managers to determine which IT capabilities should be companywide and which should be for a specific business-unit. 
4. How good do our IT services need to be?
It is up to managers to determine how important IT services are to the company as a whole and how much the company is willing to pay to insure these IT services are provided. 
5. What security and privacy risks we will accept?
High levels of security can come with high levels of cost and inconvenience.  It is up to the manager to determine what level of security is necessary while keeping in mind the need for simplicity.
6. Whom do we blame if an IT initiative fails?To avoid finger pointing when something goes wrong, organizations should assign a business executive to be accountable for IT projects and to oversee the implementation of these projects.

As someone who knows very little about IT, I assumed that all IT related decisions would best be made by an IT executive.  However, as a future manager I can now see that it is important to determine how IT's role will affect the business side of an organization and that there are certain decisions that should not be left up to the IT department.  This does make me wonder, though, how a manager should go about having a meeting with an IT executive if they understand very little IT terminology?  When I hear my computer savvy friends discussing different types of hardware, software, programming, etc it seems as if they are talking in a foreign language, so how will I be able to successfully determine IT's roles and objectives without understanding the terminology?.........I guess I can only hope that my ISDS classes will prepare me for those IT meetings.