Good or Great IT?

In a recent article in CIO Magazine, “IT departments do not deliver ‘great’ IT, say CIOs”, a survey of CIOs and IT Directors revealed that almost half do not deliver “great” IT. “Great” IT is defined by 3/4ths as being able to to add real value to the organizations strategy and bottom line.

I am always amazed when I speak to leaders of IT organizations for enterprise organizations that may know what sector of the market their organization falls into, but cannot describe to me what the business units do day-to-day and how they determine success for the business unit. I find often times I may know more by reading annual reports and surfing the company websites prior to a meeting than the IT leaders I meet within the organization. So I ask how would an IT organization believe it should have a say in strategic decision making within the organization without basic knowledge of what drives and grows the business?

Alignment to the business has almost become a passé phrase due to the lack of meat behind the initiative and the continued siloed, technology focus of many IT organizations. True alignment will only be achieved when IT organizations immerse themselves into the business and become fully integrated. A recent Information Age article quotes: “There is no such thing as an IT project: all IT’s activity should be about business projects.” The only way an IT organization can better manage change and impact is for it to be immersed and integrated in the business. This is not to suggest that IT organizations become distributed by business units, rather there are emerging roles of service managers that work side by side with the business teams on projects leveraging technology to the success of the business.

I often work with organizations on “IT projects” and the business case for an “IT project”. These are always problematic because most are “soft” in their cases of cost management. Cost saving projects that reduce hardware and software licenses are easy cases with hard savings. It’s the CMDB, SLA, ITIL process improvement, etc. projects that are difficult and I would point the finger at the root of the problem, these are typically internally, IT focused projects without links back to the business they support. I’m often looked at like I turned green and grew horns if I ask questions like, “How does this improve performance of the business? What impact on the business will this project have?”

I find ITSM (IT Service Management) projects that have a focus on managing business impacting events and can be quantified as such for business driving applications are easy cases. BSM (Business Service Management) projects that also bring in business data providing analytics regarding the effectiveness of the business providing information during the quarter versus a financial report after the fact after the quarter also have greater success. My humble advice is to always error on the side of the business and find the high impact services and understand how the technology can be better applied or improved.

IT has a difficult job in managing two sides of a coin: efficiency internally managing costs and effectiveness externally improving the business. Often times IT organizations error on what we know best, IT, but by better understanding the impact to the business and integration to the business provides the greatest benefits all the way around the business speeding up projects and decision making of projects.

– Michele