Since the beginning, IT is prone to addressing only technology and related problems. Even though organizations are heavily dependent on emerging technologies, IT teams cannot align with business yet. This makes people wonder if visibility is enough for IT governance. Their business acumen is still not up to the mark to understand the nuances of the market demands or your evolving business roadmap. In this article at Forbes, Peter Bendor-Samuel shares why IT still cannot align with the business.
Problems Aligning with Business
Numerous attempts were made in the past to make IT align with the business. The use of case tools in the 1980s, technological development based on objects, service architecture, microservices, and so on, are good examples. These did not work because organizations did not prioritize their business processes first. Successful companies had a crew with either an IT team up to date with business trends or business leaders with vast IT knowledge. Organizations then resorted to standardizing and centralizing processes to make IT align with the business.
ITIL + Standards + Centralized Efforts
Former U.S. Department of State CIO Stuart McGuigan states, “At one level, we know that optimizing steps within a process instead of the end-to-end processes as a whole is wrong.” The larger the company, the more necessary it is to regulate and unify verticals while leaving the horizontal processes partially improved. This leads to more complications.
What to Undertake
IT will align with business when you start making end-to-end changes. For instance, plan the inventory in a way that your warehouse content should match with customer demands. That way, you can satisfy the customers as well as not waste warehouse space for unnecessary items.
Though ITIL helps look after the basics of organizational governance like incidents, problems, and changes, organizations cannot fully utilize it. You should have systems that will enable employees to increase their production cycle and deliver faster.
Additionally, you must have a business leader in the meeting with the Agile developers for the methodology to work. IT cannot align with the business if programmers are iterating without a basic understanding of the corporate strategy behind the product development. Providing a career ladder for technically adept professionals can also help increase visibility in IT governance.
To view the original article in full, visit the following link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterbendorsamuel/2021/04/26/why-is-it-and-business-alignment-so-elusive/?sh=60eccdf227b4
