StrAIT Blogging

Posts Tagged ‘Communication’

I recently read a blog post that hit a nerve with me. Its link is IT-Business Alignment is Not a Meaningless Catchphrase. In this post, the author defends against the notion that IT – business alignment is passé and out of date. I agree with his argument. Alignment is the cornerstone of my consulting business because experience has taught me that it is a major issue. I decided on that business model after many years of running IT as well as other business units. I observed the need to improve the understanding our IT staff had of its customer’s needs. I’ve already had one post on the topic.

I believe that much of the discounting of the importance of IT-business alignment comes from the frameworks themselves. They don’t include much about personal relationships because they are just formal IT frameworks. They are meant to be customized for each individual company. If all that is implemented is a framework, what you have is just a formal contract. Such contracts are definitely needed and important. They govern formal expectations and deliverables. They provide the metrics to measure those deliverables. However, trust must also be present for there to be success. To have trust there must first be relationships and communications. That is where most formal IT approaches fall short. The diagram below provides a simple map for those relationships in a typical company. Professional service companies may be the exceptions to this diagram but manufacturing and manufacturing related service companies are represented.

 

In order for IT to be perceived as aligned and useful for the organization, the entire organization must perceive that to be so. That means all organizational levels must agree. That means there must be a willingness to understand and to trust IT. That means that appropriate relationships between IT and their customers must exist and those relationships are different. In aggregate they do fall into two major categories. Any individual relationship may vary, but when we focus on groups, these categories hold true. The leadership groups are similar, differing only by how much of the company’s P&L statement they own. The big change is when we focus on the people who actually make the day to day operations run. Those people may understand some version of a “big picture” but their real focus in on a very limited set of functions related to their job. They also represent the bulk to the IT group’s customers.

The message here is that IT-business alignment is important but isn’t achieved without trusting relationships between IT and their customers. Those relationships don’t exist without IT initiating the effort to build them. It’s a part that is easily ignored if we only focus on the formal part of IT best practices. These “softer” skills are a vital element in the equation.

Let me know what you think and stay tuned for more…

Let’s start by being very clear. For any business everything must ultimately align to the success of that business, period. That being said we can now focus on how all of the various pieces that make up that business must align with each other. At a high level, it is obvious that all business activities must support each other for the business to be successful. However, what I have observed over the years is that alignment is easy to get lost in the multitude of daily pressing details that we must deal with. This thought was best captured in Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In this book there is one diagram that has stuck with me over the years because it is direct and simple. It is shown in Figure 1.

 

 

  

  

 

 

  

  

Figure 1 Covey’s time management matrix
 

For more information on Covey’s teachings look here. In this diagram we see Quadrant I as the place where most of us spend much of our time. Quadrant II is where we need to spend most of our time. We need to manage our time such that we can spend more of it thinking about planning, relationships and collaboration. Spending our time here is where alignment happens. We won’t spend any time on Quadrants III and IV. We are wasting our time there.
So what else do we need to consider when aligning our business operations? I argue that we must first understand that all things technology can best be represented as a circle bisected into two parts. One part includes the tools; the hardware and software that enable our business to function. The other part includes how those tools are used to deliver real benefits to our business. Each of those parts is dominated by very different states of mind. Historically, IT has focused on tools and the business users focus on their application. There is overlap for each group as shown in Figure 2.

  

  

 

  

 

  

  

 

Figure 2   All things technology and interest groups

The overlap between the interests of those two groups is important. The end user group must understand the tools well enough to know what can actually be accomplished in a reasonable period of time and the IT group must understand the needs of the user group well enough to deliver useful tools. Orchestrating the communication between these two interest groups is an ongoing activity between end customers of the tools and those people who must deliver those tools to the marketplace. It is a painful and inefficient process constrained by the financial interests and negotiating positions of each group. It’s beneficial to each group to make this process more effective.
We must also consider the methodologies that are needed for the alignment of business improvement work. For this we will focus on two of the most representative methodologies for their respective interest groups. For the tool provider group we will use RUP, or Rational Unified Process, as the most used (in its multiple variations) and for the end user community the BPM-based methodologies. The overlap diagram is shown in Figure 3.

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

  

Figure 3   All things technology and improvement methodology overlap
 

The key difference here is that BPM is about addressing what business processes are needed and the functionality of the tools each business needs. On the other hand, RUP is focused on the effectiveness of software development. Delivering business process improvements will consist of new capabilities delivered by some combination of revising the current tools used by the business, buying new software and writing new software. Neither BPM nor RUP alone is suitable for doing that, so managing the overlap between those two families of methodologies is crucial.
 

Finally, there is the overlap between those groups responsible for the day-to-day operation of the tools and those responsible for their daily application. That overlap is shown in Figure 4.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

Figure 4 All things technology and daily operations
 

The group responsible for the delivery of those technology tools to the business, either internal IT or external, hosted providers is represented by the ITIL, or IT Infrastructure Library, framework. The group responsible for the daily use of those tools is represented by the various continuous improvement frameworks, such as Six Sigma. Each of these groups needs some framework around which to manage daily operation and incremental improvements. Again, managing the overlap of these two interest groups and their frameworks is extremely important.

In each of the cases above, managing the overlap of the various interest groups is a matter of ongoing communication. That communication must happen within an oversight group composed of representatives of each of the interest groups with shared vocabulary and skills inventory. None of the groups need to be experts in the other’s fields but they must commit to understanding the basic needs and issues. This can be a challenge in most organizations but it is vital if the business wants to improve.

Alignment is important and complex. It requires a commitment from a business’s leadership to insure ongoing communications between the core groups within the company. It requires a commitment to include vendors, external service providers and other external stake holders in that collaboration in a meaningful way. So how do you do that? The options are growing every day. There are portal frameworks, like SharePoint and WebSphere. There are peer-to-peer tools, like Groove and Notes. There are Web 2.0 tools, like Huddle and Zoho. The list goes on. Regardless of what tools you use, the ongoing collaboration between the consumers of technology tools and the providers of those tools, both in improvement activities and ongoing daily operations is vital.

Thanks for your attention. Stay tuned…

I am trying to identify ways of communicating with executives using social networking tools. As a member of the same age group and general demographic, I have a feel for the answer, but I need to keep an open mind. My basic question is “Can we use social media as a viable way to communicate with executive sponsors of our projects?” I have attended a number of webinars on the topic and have been reading what I can find but nothing addresses this question specifically. I have put forth the effort to become more familiar with these technologies. I view myself as informed and motivated in their use but not an expert. I suspect that most C-level executives and their staffs have neither the time nor inclination to do the same. I suspect that it will vary by industry but have no data to support a conclusion. All of the data I have is not specific to executives. As I think out the details of this issue I can take multiple positions but don’t feel confident in deciding which one is right.

As you can tell, I suspect much but actually know little. Thus, I am asking for any data or opinions on the subject anyone can provide. Please post any comment you think could be useful to this post. Thanks for any help you can provide.