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White Paper

Trends in no-man’s-land between

business and IT, and other exotic places

In Mark Smalley’s ‘Trends in no-man’s-land between business and IT,

and other exotic places’ workshop for The Hague University for Applied

Sciences on 21 February 2013, the students had the opportunity to

share their opinions about the relationship between business and IT, and how the business fulfills their responsibilities with respect to

‘business information management’. This paper summarizes the

millennial perspective: less division of the business and the IT

department in a formal demand-supply relationship but shared responsibilities, and not only the need for IT people to have a better

understanding of the business perspective but also for business people

to be able to assess benefits and risks associated with IT.

Mark Smalley, 12 March 2013

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Is there a profitable relationship between

business and IT?

Successful relationships between business and IT are few and far between.

While this can be analysed in terms of processes, roles and responsibilities,

knowledge, information flow, etc., there often seems to be a basic lack of understanding of each other’s world.

The 25 students were divided into 4 groups and discussed this topic, summarizing the discussion in terms of recommendations:

Positioning • IT supports and follows the business, although certainly at a strategic

level IT-driven initiatives are expected

• IT is no longer a cost centre but provides business benefits

Organization

• There is no standard way of organizing – it depends on the

characteristics of the specific organisation • Break down the boundaries between business and IT: convergence of

parts of the business and parts of IT at strategic and management

layers, with shared responsibilities (this was sketched as a department ‘on top of’ the more operational business and IT entities)

• There were varying opinions about how the operational business and

IT entities should be organized, but one recommendation was to locate

IT within the business and to task them both with the outputs and outcomes of the business processes

Knowledge • Enrich knowledge on both sides: IT should have a better

understanding of the business (including business priorities), while the

business needs more IT knowledge • There is also need for a group in which business knowledge and IT

knowledge is clustered (see ‘convergence’)

• Some, more technical, IT roles will not need much business knowledge

and some IT professionals will not have the ambition or interest to acquire extensive business knowledge

• Ensure transparency of how IT departments work, making them easier

to comprehend

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Approach • IT solutions should focus on business services and products, as

opposed to business processes

Competences

• The complexity of the business environment the business and

therefore also the information systems is increasing: more attention is

needed for change management and for architecture in the sense of how the various organizational and IT components are interrelated

(this needs a multidisciplinary approach)

• IT needs marketing skills in order to ‘sell’ itself to the business

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Is the business in charge?

While the business should be in charge of (the use of) all business assets,

including information (technology), it is often the case that people in IT believe that the business should be taking IT more seriously concerned. This

if often expressed in terms of accountability and responsibility, decision-

making, and capabilities and competences to execute the tasks generally known as ‘business information management’. Once again, the attendees

were divided into groups and discussed this topic, summarizing the

discussion in terms of the following business responsibilities.

Business responsibilities

• Managing people and other resources, and time

• Articulating the vision, mission and strategy of the enterprise • Specifying the functional (and some non-functional) requirements for

IT solutions

• Understanding the services that the IT department or external service

providers can provide (this insight is often a problem) • Decision-making ( a question was whether there are ‘SMART’

guidelines for decision-making)

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Author’s commentary

While many of the findings of the students correspond with those from

similar workshops conducted with seasoned IT professionals, the millennials placed a stronger emphasis on less division of the business and the IT

department in a formal demand-supply relationship but shared

responsibilities, and not only the need for IT people to have a better understanding of the business perspective but also for business people to be

able to assess benefits and risks associated with IT.

An interesting afterthought was how a convergence of business and IT would affect the current educational IT-based curricula.

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References

Business information Services Library www.aslbislfoundation.org/en/bisl/publications/books/299-2012-

bisl-een-framework-voor-business-informatiemanagement

Business information management function

http://aslbislfoundation.org/en/bisl/publications/whitepapers/doc_download/

787-2012-08-white-paper-bim-function-v5-m-smalley

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to The Hague University for Applied Sciences for the

opportunity to engage with their student and to the students themselves for sharing their thoughts, in particular to Kevin Berk and Marc Lelijveld, who

initiated the event and to lecturer Ed Meijer for supporting the initiative.

Author Mark Smalley is Ambassador-in-chief at the not-for-

profit, vendor-independent ASL BiSL Foundation and is a

self-employed IT Management Consultant at Smalley.IT.

He is specialized in Application Lifecycle Management and IT Governance. Mark is a regular speaker at international

conferences, where he has reached out to thousands of

IT professionals.

Follow & engage with Mark on Twitter @marksmalley

Email: mark.smalley@aslbislfoundation.org

Further details, publications & speaking engagements at Smalley.IT