Business-aligned IT: A more collaborative approach
between IT and the business is required towards software
development, in order to align IT systems with business
needs.
Charles Dickens might have been talking about social upheaval,
but his opening paragraph for A Tale of Two Cities, "It was the
best of times, it was the worst of times", can just as well be
applied to today's software development process.
It is the best of times because of the potential created by
software applications, more advanced software architectures,
advances in communication networks, wider bandwidth, proliferation
and sophistication of mobile devices, and the convergence of
collaborative experiences, technologies and tools.
It is the worst of times because of software complexity, project
failures, the need for governance of both regulatory and corporate
goals, better visibility, control, quality and the need to be agile
enough to change software "on demand".
Over the next few years, IT departments will be bombarded with
new ways of writing and delivering software. Service-orientated
architecture and rich interactive applications are just two of
these, and each will require a lot of care and attention before it
can be deployed.
However challenging technology might be, IT will not be able to
meet that challenge on its own. It needs the support and insight of
the business. Unfortunately, business and IT have not traditionally
seen eye to eye.
Business executives would like IT to behave like an impeccable
butler, but many see IT more as a wilful child. Both sides are
responsible for the failure of IT to meet expectations, which has
led many chief executives to turn to outsourcing.
The business side of an organisation expects IT systems to allow
the business to operate more effectively. But business executives
focus mostly on immediacy and fast responses to market changes.
They often ignore the need for forward planning or discussions with
IT about what will be needed over the next five years.
On the other hand, IT teams are often easily distracted by
technology for technology's sake, rather than concentrating on what
needs to be delivered. Many fail to create products that can be
maintained and adapted to changing requirements.
IT is also operating under increasingly constrained budgets, so
when faced with demands for immediate action, it often lacks the
resources to deliver.
So how do you break this cycle of mutual failure? Combining
existing IT practices with a more collaborative approach and
enforcing engineering principles would be a good start. This means
bringing together business and IT to ensure that each understands
the other.
This is more than just another "team-building" exercise where
both parties are sent out into the woods until they can work
together. The goal is to create a viable process by which IT
planning and business needs can be aligned.
For this to be an effective process, everyone from the board
down must buy into it. While there has rightly been a lot of
attention paid to the role of the board in security and compliance,
there has not been the same focus when it comes to the overall IT
strategy. Many companies still lack a committed IT champion at
board level and this must change if IT's success rate is to be
improved.
There is a perception that the IT industry, when challenged,
will always "invent" a new approach. This deflects criticism, can
be hailed as the next best thing, and is often an excuse to not
"fix" what is clearly broken. New approaches are often
counter-productive and expensive.
Instead of starting anew, a more collaborative approach is
needed. Software development - no matter where it is done - is
central to the business process, not something that is added
later.
When the business is looking to where it wants to be in five
years' time, it must ensure that the IT systems required to deliver
that vision are part of the IT planning process, not an
afterthought. This does not mean changing the way the business
works or buying into yet another set of IT tools and
methodologies.
Build on what you have instead. "Effective use" based on
increased collaboration between business and IT people rather than
"rip and replace" is the key to success.
Software providers have already begun to react to the need for
collaboration. Microsoft, Borland, IBM/Rational and others are
building collaboration into the core of their new products with
role-based tools built on a single repository and a consistent view
of data. This has meant that every team member remains in sync with
the rest of the team, preventing misunderstandings that cause
money, time and effort to be wasted and lead to end products that
satisfy no one.
That said, the new generation of collaborative tools are
expensive and need to improve in many aspects. Suppliers have put
them together through a mix of home-grown and acquired technologies
which may, or may not, be well integrated with one another.
Collaboration is, unfortunately, still limited to within the IT
department (and then not always effectively). Application lifecycle
management products rediscovered the importance of architects, and
devised new ways to get them fully involved in the development
process alongside developers and testers in a move to
service-oriented architectures. However, collaboration needs to
happen at more levels and between more roles for a successfully
aligned development process.
For example, roles that are typically responsible for the access
and integration elements of an application need to be more clearly
defined and involved.
Collaboration also needs to reach out beyond IT users to
business people. Business users either get very simplified tools
that do not integrate well or have to use the same tools as the IT
experts. When they exist, collaborative processes and tools only
deal with governance issues (a good start).
Enterprises need tools that move beyond collaboration around
governance to enable better and wider collaboration in other parts
of the development process. Delivering software code will always be
the preserve of the software development team, whether it is
developed internally or managed externally. However, business users
need a new generation of business user-specific tools to be
involved in the definition of enterprise models, process and
business rules. They also need better requirement management
tools.
Requirements management, for example, is an area that is crying
out for more effective products that will deliver improved
interactions and collaboration with business.
With a collaborative approach underpinning the entire IT cycle,
it should be possible to choose the right approach and delivery
mechanism for each project. Forward planning should ensure that the
underlying hardware is capable of delivering the software.
None of this will happen without a framework that is focused on
aligning IT and the business. We should not kid ourselves about the
depth of the current problem. Money is being wasted in far too many
companies. The gap between IT and the business is, at best, being
maintained; at worst it is growing into a chasm and if nothing is
done to change that, everyone will have failed the business.
Bola Rotibi is a senior analyst at Ovum
www.ovum.com