what is it?
IT-business alignment is seen as a top priority in the global IT leader community in numerous surveys – but what is it, exactly? In The Technology Garden: Cultivating Sustainable IT-business Alignment, a 2007 Wiley & Sons book co-written by MWD analysts, we proposed the following definition:
IT-business alignment is a collaborative process that business people and IT organisations go through to create an environment in which investment in IT and delivery of IT services reflect business priorities, whether IT services are sourced internally or externally; and in which business priorities are influenced by understanding of IT capabilities and limitations.
Central to success of an IT-business alignment initiative is the concept of sustainability. IT-business alignment is not something that can be done as a “one-off” project: the pace of change in both business and technology means that any isolated project of this nature will start to drift away from its target sooner or later. Rather, successful IT-business alignment has to be founded on a shared way of thinking that promotes a continued attempt to maintain the reflection of business goals and priorities in the application of IT.
what IT leaders need to know
Against this backdrop, it’s clear that IT delivery organisations need to establish and manage practices that can support enterprises as they look to respond to high-level business pressures, as well as driving an IT-business alignment agenda.
What’s more, these practices need to be armed with information and advice to help them steer through the opportunities and challenges associated with the business and technology disruptions that seem to wash over industry almost daily – promising new IT delivery and licensing models (Software-as-a-Service and Open Source models); new ways of engaging people with IT systems and information (Rich Internet Applications, so-called "Web 2.0" technologies); new ways of building IT infrastructure (Virtualisation, Cloud Computing); and of course new demands (changes to regulatory environments, "Green" business initiatives, and so on).
MWD's research framework of topics is designed to support IT delivery organisations in doing all these things.
why align business and IT?
IT-business alignment is complicated and involves a lot of effort – from both business and IT teams. So why should anyone bother?
The answer is that IT-business alignment is both an organisational imperative and a personal imperative for any IT leader or architect (whether "internal" or employed by a commercial service provider). The competitive landscape and the increased willingness on the part of enterprises to outsource, "insource"; and renegotiate IT service delivery is raising the bar across the IT industry. If you want to be seen to be doing a good job in IT, you need to be able to show that you're taking more of a "customer centric" view of how you help deliver IT capabilities and services.
business and IT have become irreversibly interconnected
As senior executives become more aware that IT is woven into the fabric of their businesses, and understand that IT is increasingly inseparable from most business activity, their willingness to treat IT investment as a"special case" is declining rapidly – and as a result overall IT budgets are being managed very closely: funding for new projects is expected to be delivered at least partly through cost savings elsewhere.
Just cutting costs blindly isn't enough, though. Consolidation and simplification should be the goal - this cuts costs, but it also creates a reliable platform for business innovation. Any attempt to pursue IT projects in support of business innovation which build on overly-complicated systems, duplicated and inconsistent information, and fragile integrations will face significant complications and may well stifle the very innovation they set to out to enable.