What is BITA Triage?
The purpose of this post is to try to articulate the reasons behind creating our new BITA Triage offering. It isn’t intended as an overt pitch for us but as an observation of the marketplace in general. First, we need to define the terms. Triage is a term used in the medical field to refer to the initial sorting out of patients based on need and available resources. A more complete definition can be found here. Next is BITA which stands for Business IT
Alignment. It struck me some time ago that many references to the notion of BITA had become somewhat negative about the concept, claiming it was ineffective or out of date. I disagree with that idea so I investigated where it came from.
To be clear, while I did a lot of reading of various materials, like Blog posts, articles and some books, I do not claim that my approach followed a rigorous methodology as used in statistically valid research projects. I do believe that my research was extensive enough to provide useful insight based on both anecdotal data and personal experience. After all, I intended to use it to make an informed business decision and investment. Some of the notable insight I gained was:
- Most opinions were based on comparing the formal theory of BITA frameworks to real life applications of those frameworks.
- The need of the author to attract readership by being somewhat controversial.
- Some authors are very passionate on the subject and are somewhat rigid in their definition of success.
- Several authors ignored or undervalued soft skills like relationships and communication.
From these observations and others I concluded that:
- Many perceived alignment problems stemmed from poor communications between key players in organizations.
- Our current offering, the SLR methodology, was too focused on quantitative analysis, like spreadsheets and simulations.
What was needed was an initial qualitative body of work which would quickly sort and prioritize the client’s needs and then rank them is some logical manner. From this I realized that the need I was describing was a form of Voice of the Customer (VOC) survey and analysis. A more complete definition is provided here. Essentially, the customers were the business process execution staff in a client’s organization. The product was the body of services offered by the IT organization which enables those business processes. From this it was obvious that the best approach would come from the quality and marketing worlds. The most appropriate tools are established practices like a VOC survey and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) analysis. Those would be combined with some methodology to assess the communication styles and coach the client’s key players on how to improve their communications effectiveness. The result was the BITA Triage offering. It is described here.
As I proof read this post I’m struck with the simplicity of the description of our approach contrasted with all the work to produce a competent offering. I think it was worth the effort and adds a valuable new dimension to our offerings. Only time will tell.
Thanks for your time and stay tuned for more…
