Building Bridges Between IT and Other Departments
April 29, 2008
Patrick Gray, floated an interesting and perhaps useful suggestion in a column posted yesterday. The premise of Gray’s article is that IT tends to treat other areas of the company as “customers”: They passively wait until a problem, request or issue arises and then do their best to respond. Gray’s point is that IT best serves the company—and itself—by being far more proactively involved in the company’s activities. IT will thrive if it is seen as a helper creating plans, not merely an implementor problem solver.
Gray’s suggestion, which he said came to him from a CIO of a large multinational: A “tour of duty” program—in essence, temporary trades of personnel between IT and business departments—will foster this proactive attitude.
In our opinion, such a program would have even greater impact. Simply, knowing what other folks do and how they do it does nothing but help the business. It creates a far deeper understanding of what employees in each department need from each other.
While Gray’s point is at a higher level—a better understanding of each others’ business will create new ideas and approaches—a significant value will be in simply smoothing the day-to-day rough spots that crop up between departments. One department will see how some small change that matters little to them can save time, money and aggravation down the hall.
The overt and subtle are two sides of the same coin. Finally, it would not be surprising to see the visitors come up with worthwhile ideas and suggestions for the department he or she is visiting.
Clearly, such a program must be used sparingly. To realize the full benefit, a week or two would be required. This would weaken the department of the person being temporarily relocated. It’s a worthwhile tradeoff, however, that will pay great benefit over time.
Bridge Photograph Courtesy of FreeFoto.com.
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--Carl Weinschenk
I thoroughly agree with Patrick Gray and Carl on this.
Organizations do tend to seperate IT from their other ‘Business’ functions. The dictum in Organizations seems the same - ‘Business drives IT’. When I stepped into the Corporate world as a fresher, I was told our IT department was more a support function for other departments, not contributing towards revenue generation. I was surprised, given the fact that the headcount in the IT department was ever-increasing - which only meant an increase in the demand for IT to replace/ improve existing functionalities/ processes. And obviously, the high demand of IT was only because of its strong impact on the Business and consequently, the Balance sheet.
IT departments are shielded from the actual Business at all levels, and I feel the problem should be addressed at all levels. Programmer/ designers/ Leads are more into the ‘HOWs’ of any problems rather than the ‘WHYs’ - As Carl rightly said, IT is seen more as an ‘implementor problem solver’. IT Project/ Progam Managers more worried about the deadlines and delivery.
There has to be a change in the way a person in a given IT role is evaluated. There has to be more emphasis on understanding of the Business Domain. Perhaps, in addition to the normal expectations of a role, an IT personnel should also be evaluated in terms of his understanding and contribution to the Business - Are IT personnels in the know of ‘why’ they have been asked to implement the said features? Can a Team Lead suggest changes to the processes chalked out in the SRS that will better improve the Business? Can a programmer suggest any changes in the workflow, no matter how small, that will benefit the Business users (’customers’)? Thus, a slight deviation in the factors governing an IT worker’s appraisal will definitely be incentive enough for the IT specialists to get more involved in the ‘why’ aspects of IT, better understand how their applications reflect in the existing Business processes or Balance sheet, etc. From the ‘Business’ specialists’ side, they could be encouraged to get more involved in Knowledge sharing sessions with their IT counterparts. More importanly, there should be a transparency to the very end - especially when it comes to sharing those all important numbers, generated by the IT applications, be it revenue or savings.
Thus, only mutual collaboration and transparency across Business functionalities would ensure the IT department in any Organization does not become a secluded faction, but rather (more so in today’s era) the underlying factor that holds together various Business functionalities.
Thus, unless there is a change in the Organizational policy and outlook as a whole and unless there are changes introduced by the top layer of the Organization, IT will continue to be a ’service desk’ within the Organization which the ‘customers’ can avail or discontinue at their own will.