The so-called 'business/IT divide' appears to be getting wider
at the very time when business and technology are fusing, and
everyone and everything is becoming connected, says
Carl Bate, VP UK CTO, Capgemini.
So, it is little wonder we have so many real-world issues about
new business technology models and how business can embrace
them.
Andy
Mulholland, Global Chief Technology Officer at Capgemini, sums
the situation up perfectly: "There is a crisis of communication so
entrenched and intractable that many people cease to notice it
anymore. When business and IT people sit down at a table to solve
problems and build new solutions, the outcome is rarely pretty and
often the process can be downright unpleasant. It turns out that
communicating about technology is much harder than anyone ever
realised."
If you ask people in business about the biggest problems they
face today, almost without exception you'll hear about the
'business/IT divide'. This might not surface immediately, but
progress the discussion a little and at some point there will be an
issue - perhaps around budget, complexity, agility, customer
interaction or business information - that ultimately leads to a
problem with 'IT', and more precisely, a problem with the
business/IT divide.
At the end of the project day, one walks around the corridors to
the sounds of 'if only the business had done a better job of
specifying what they wanted' (IT folks) or 'if only IT had
delivered what we asked for' (business folks).
So at least 'business' and 'IT' agree on something!
This is at a time when the users (I much prefer to use the term
participants in an information system as opposed to users of
information technology) often know more about how to exploit IT in
business than the IT department, when the CIO role is amorphous at
best and when the polar opposite worlds of 'Web 2.0' and 'corporate
IT' are colliding.
It is a time when a crisis of communication we don't even notice
anymore is the last thing we need.
I think we have discovered a step forward in the journey of
addressing the divide. Nigel Green and I, with the support of many
compatriots, have attempted to do the discovery justice and share
it through a book 'Lost in Translation - a handbook for information
systems in the 21st century'.
We believe there are some things we need to 'unlearn' about IT,
and many things we are yet to learn about IS (information systems).
We think an information systems perspective provides common ground
for business and IT, and we've defined a 5-word common language for
IS that shines a light on the 5 dimensions that seem to make a real
difference in getting the outcomes that are really wanted. Often,
what a solution should do for the business is described in the
broadest strokes. How that solution might be implemented is
described in microscopic detail.
A holy grail it is not, but a step forward we believe it is. We
hope readers might find the thinking useful and we very much
welcome views back.
Lost in Translation - a
handbook for information systems in the 21st century