We’ve outlined much of the
structure of the development process, in which the enterprise computing
system is upgraded or enhanced by new software. In the heart of the
process lies the singular, crucial requirement for stakeholders to
communicate, and collaborate, not just in the requirements and design
stages, but also throughout the entire mission.
The
supreme enterprise buzzword currently is Agility, but underneath this
lies a less gripping but equally crucial word: Collaboration.
Cross-enterprise collaboration between all the company’s personnel over
all its concerns is the ultimate target of today’s trend. But in the
world of Dovetail Software, collaboration simply between IT and
business people within the organization is a great beginning.
We’ve
discussed the elements of software upgrades at the enterprise level,
and continually the crux of the matter is clear and actionable
consensus between business and IT. James Taylor explains why.
“To empower business users to own the business rules
in their systems, you need to create an environment not where IT is
replaced by business users but where business users and IT can
collaborate. The IT team needs to be able to identify the right data
sources, integrate with other systems, identify the structure and
metadata for the rules that will be required and develop a structure
within which the business users can work. The business users for their
part have to work with them to make sure the rule templates and data
structures will meet their needs and then they have to step up to
owning the rules developed using these templates. In most systems this
will not be 100% of the rules but will be the ones that change
frequently (promotion or availability rules for instance) or require
business expertise to manage (underwriting or fraud rules for
instance).” See Business and IT collaboration
Companies struggle daily with the task of
turning themselves into learning companies, and to develop greater
agility, and cultivate the ability to innovate. Companies who train for
good health in the form of freely flowing internal communications do
this to strengthen their market positions. Smart companies are
successful companies. But it is no small task to open an organization
up to internal collaboration.
As an engagement manager
writes in ITtoolbox: “In order to get to a consistent perspective on
the goals, expectations, and performance of your business, one must
integrate not just the systems and processes, but also the people
behind them.” He continues:
“How does an organization reach this collaborative
state? As with many things, the leadership style is important. Is the
culture conducive to creating the bonds and trust between leaders and
subordinates, peers and team members? Are the rules and regulations
consistent throughout the organization. And most importantly, does
everyone understand the organizational strategy, the tactics, goals and
objectives, as well as the purpose of everyone else?” From Performance Management: Integrating Systems, Data, and People
This list of requirements is daunting.
Anyone even faintly familiar with business hierarchy will grasp how
difficult it is to establish these conditions, and to keep them alive.
How do people build relationships throughout the enterprise, each with
everyone else, such that everyone at every point can know the status of
every other one at need?
The Web, as the largest network
of distributed computing ever created, and with over a billion users,
shows how it’s done. Web 2.0, so-called, has given us several,
inarguably great achievements: the coming together of millions of users
into communities and networks; newly developed rapid-collaboration
spaces and tools; navigation and influence driven by user review and
recommendation; and user-generated content and commentary, increasingly
though the mashup. Out of the Web has come many proven collaboration
tools, not the least of which is the wiki.
“About two years ago, a handful of tech-savvy
employees at two very different European companies began dabbling in
the use of wikis—collaborative tools that let you build Web pages that
allow users to edit documents, share ideas, or monitor the status of a
project. Within months, the skunkworks had spawned so many Wiki pages
that each company decided to launch an official company wiki. – Wikis: An Essential Corporate Tool?
As so often in the modern enterprise, it is
software that has a liberating effect on internal communication.
Leadership support of initiatives is crucial for them to prevail, but
the work will either be fruitful or barren. Collaboration, with its
enabling software tools, gives voice to the struggle.
