IT vs. Business - and old feud

More than once I’ve heard technologists complaint about the business and how they don’t understand the issues the IT faces to provide appropriate Service Levels to the business, on the other hand, I also hear the complaints of the “Business” on how IT and the solutions intended to provide functional services are not flexible and take too long to implement.

Who is right?  BOTH!

Until recent times, we had not been able to provide better alignment between IT and Business.  Yes, I know that we have preached about it for years if not decades, but reality is that the internal IT department is no longer the preferred IT Services provider and that many of the core IT solutions (e.g. ERP, messaging, etc…) are an impediment to agility in the business.

So, how are we to solve this intricate and complex problem? The answer seems simple at first.  Technologists will propose Service Oriented Architecture principles to be adopted, the Business will demand Agile, nimble solutions. But more than one enterprise will lose sight of the greater goal before they are done implementing something that works.

It is absolutely critical to have a good plan for this enterprise transformation, a plan that includes details for sourcing options (cloud computing, SaaS, etc…), organizational (IT and business), technology, security, and operations among others.  My point is that this is not only a technology solution and any plan that does not include more than technology is destined to fail.

I will be sharing more thought on future blog posts about what things should be considered in order to implement a successful Service Oriented Strategy that will enable business agility.  Keep in mind that not all companies face the same issues and that IT /Business dynamics are different from company to company.  Nevertheless, the same principles might apply and the detail implementation plans should be customized for each organization.