The issue of IT alignment is
commonly heard nowadays, as part of the plea of the business side of
the enterprise to get better response from IT. Some say that such
alignment comes at the expense of technical proficiency, but we
disagree. We’re tempted to say that alignment is just another word for
results.
As Dovetail Software says about itself:
“Dovetail understands the nuances of conducting
business in different industries. Customer experiences and
relationships are core to most businesses success.” – We Know Our Customers. Do You?
The piece goes on to talk about Dovetail’s
seamless integration (referring especially to replacing the Amdocs
applications and fitting smoothly into a Clarify install). But the
point here is that Dovetail has always understood that business
requirements drive the need for software. Yet results delivered to the
desktop are not achieved at the expense of technical effectiveness –
quite the opposite.
Demian Entrekin at ITtoolbox explores
– and refutes – this dichotomy sometimes published that IT has to
choose between alignment with business and technical efficiency.
“But that said, my experience with customers implementing PPM solutions is that they create alignment benefits when they focus on effectiveness.” – Effectiveness vs. Alignment
There is another side to this coin of
course, namely that alignment itself when achieved doesn’t mean that
the technical work gets done flawlessly by itself – THAT effort still remains. MIT elaborates on this for us:
“Complexity doesn’t magically disappear just because
an IT organization learns to focus on aligned projects rather than less
aligned ones. On the contrary, in some situations it can actually get
worse. We’ve seen firsthand how IT organizations provide dedicated
resources, such as application developers and data centers, to each
business unit – in order to improve alignment. They develop customized
best-of-breed solutions designed to serve each business’s unique needs.
Meanwhile, they ignore the need for standardization and upgrading of
legacy systems. They create a labyrinth of new complexity on top of the
old, making system enhancements and infrastructure improvements ever
more difficult to implement and leaving significant potential scale
benefits untapped.” – Avoiding the Alignment Trap in IT
We recommend this article for a good tour of
the horizon. Especially compelling is the story of Nestle, which
credits its competitive advantage and its income surge of $30billion
solely to its seven-year IT alignment effort (headed by a business
executive, not IT).
We can begin to conclude (1) that
alignment is not achieved at the expense of technical efficiency; (2)
that alignment is necessary, and a crucial strategic goal for every
enterprise; and (3) that alignment alone means nothing, the traditional
task of IT still remains. All this being so, what changes? Perhaps the
methods are what change.
Enterprise architect Michael
Hugos talks about agile development, and claims a natural alignment
that arises out of the use of this technique.
“This means practitioners of agile IT learn to size
up what at first seem to be complex situations; they get good at
understanding what business people need and they find simple ways to
deliver the most important capabilities quickly (often in 30 days or
less). Then they stay close to the business as situations unfold and
they keep building on the systems already delivered to provide people
with new capabilities in a timely manner.” – The Three Laws of Agility
We concur. We’ll continue to talk about the methods of IT, and the beneficial results of new ways.
