'Business-IT alignment' is dead... whatever it was

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Perception is Reality - Agile can Help the Enterprise!

In my experience, the old adage, ?perception is reality? is the main driver of a lack of ?IT / Business alignment?. And most ?business? have a perception that IT does not deliver on time or within budget. Right or wrong this is the belief of many businesses which leads to the perception of a lack of IT / Business alignment. Historically the ?business? has a lot of ammunition to back up this perception. How many ERP installs went as planned, how many customers are happy with their CRM application and the list can go on and on.

So just what is the business? I am sure there is a more complete definition but for the sake of argument, the business is a group of organizations, brands, products, etc that when aligned do a very good job of selling products, satisfying customer needs, generating revenue and profits, etc. Each of these organizations has to work in harmony for the ?business? to be successful. Using the CFO and financial department as an example. If the financial team did not deliver the monthly, quarterly or year-end closes on time, or make payroll payments on time, or meet government reporting requirements, they would be replaced immediately! On the other hand, IT seems to consistently miss delivery dates getting replaced. I think this aligns with your idea that there is a tight coupling between the ?business? and IT as the business is dependent on IT, even if it does a poor job. Once again fueling the perception of lack of IT / business alignment.

Can Agile help? You mention, Agile methodologies show promise but are not for enterprise sized problems. In my experience, Agile methods attempt to get the ?business?, usually one or more organizational units that are requesting some type of application functionality, to take a key role in defining the actual application requirements in a highly iterative manner. The key objective is that IT will be flexible and let the business change their mind on functionality, needs and feature priority as they see the application evolve before their eyes. When done right I have seen this work for enterprise applications. Assuming we all agree that a billing or energy trading application for a large energy company, or say a system to schedule and manage surgeries in a large hospital constitutes enterprise. In these cases Agile has proven very beneficial in driving very lean applications that directly meet the ever changing business needs.

Result? A perception of IT and business alignment!

In these tough economic times having IT really work toward delivering very lean applications using Agile methods that address the exact business need will be critical for both business and IT survival.

Posted by: miwjones1   Posted on: 02/27/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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