Business Intelligence Network - The Vision for BI and Beyond

The Road to Business-IT Alignment, Part 3

Published: December 20, 2007

Building on Part 2 of this series, this article looks at a third area for enhancing alignment between business and IT, organizational infrastructure.

Editor's note: Building on Part 2 of this series, this article looks at a third area for enhancing alignment between business and IT, organizational infrastructure, where the focus is more on specialized skills, background knowledge and experience and ability to interact cross-functionally, rather than on reporting relationships (although they are influential, too).

Enabling Roles and Employee Development

Business Analyst. Business analyst is the pivotal role for facilitating business and IT alignment. Unfortunately, the role tends to be undervalued by management – probably because the job is perceived as “filling in forms” if it reports to the business or project management function, and documenting a high-level design if it reports to IT. Good writing skills are part of the job, but there are others skills and qualities that are essential when the incumbent serves as the linchpin between IT and a business function. It’s not easy to find a candidate with all of the skills and qualities to be that linchpin.

Skills and knowledge: A strong candidate is an expert in the business function he or she will represent – preferably having held several different operational roles within the workgroup. For example, the well-rounded business analyst for a marketing department might have had the following jobs: communications specialist, marketing analyst, and advertising account manager.

The ideal candidate knows the pain of business users firsthand, understands the process conventions of and regulatory constraints on the function, and is current on functional best practices and trends (e.g., strategic supply chain management in purchasing and manufacturing, activity-based costing in accounting, or rapid prototyping in engineering).

The candidate who has these skills and knowledge is able to probe business users on convoluted procedures, work-arounds, manual interventions and other productivity-limiting aspects of work that would be invisible to an “outsider.” 

Experience: A strong candidate has participated in IT projects in differing roles, from being a stakeholder providing requirements and evaluating the business viability of off-the-shelf applications to executing site surveys, planning and deploying training, and providing help desk support during shakedown periods. The more opportunity the candidate has had to collaborate with IT on problem-solving and appreciate the long-term effects of customizations and tweaks on maintenance and support, the better. Academic background in management information systems (MIS) or programming is a plus, but an aptitude for comprehending technology concepts is essential.

Qualities: A strong candidate has excellent communication skills – listening, oral and written. She is perceived as sincere and fair; has demonstrated talent for taking a set of constraints and coming up with a creative solution within those constraints; is able to resolve conflicts through conversation, negotiation and education; has a history of following through on commitments; and feels rewarded when a project makes life easier for everyone – from the frontline business user to the IT operations team.

Activities: At a minimum, the incumbent is responsible for the following activities:

• Identify the representative sample of stakeholders in a project and engage them in requirements and acceptance activities.
  
  
• Plan and facilitate interviews; review business plans, existing process diagrams and reports; observe and document business activity relevant to the project.
  
  
• Document, validate and secure sign-off from the business sponsor.
  
  
• Design and prepare materials to support acceptance activities; facilitate acceptance activities and consolidate results.
  
  
• Alert the business sponsor and key stakeholders to emerging issues; facilitate timely decisions by providing background information and coaching on potential impacts.
  
  
• Represent the business in planning deployment. Facilitate development of required training, support materials, coaching and help for initial deployment and long-term operations.
  
  
• Represent business constituents on IT committees and in meetings designed to address cross-functional technology needs – data integration or establishing a change management procedure, for example.

Data Stewardship. There are many reasons for data problems, but they can exacerbate tension between the business and IT largely because data development and management require a distinctive set of professional skills and knowledge. Business activities generate data, and require its use to answer questions. IT skills – like application design, systems architecture, hardware configuration, coding – only store  and move data.¹ Data development and management focuses on the structure and meaning of the data itself and maintenance of its quality. These responsibilities are replete with specialized tools and methods uniquely designed to support data professionals.

Most functions have at least one subject matter expert (SME) who knows the data in supporting applications inside and out and has learned from hard knocks. An informal network channels others to these unofficial gurus when they need help. SMEs are seldom recognized as enablers of business and IT alignment; they’re more likely to be called on to explain a mess. Baseline believes that alignment will be elusive until it is defined and treated as a tri-discipline alliance: business-data-IT.

“Professionalizing” data development and support responsibilities improves alignment and enhances exploitation of the data asset. For that reason, we encourage companies to establish a formal data stewardship program, whereby:

• Informal SMEs are given the time, training, visibility and authority for doing work they’ve been doing on the side for years – and are held accountable for their results.
  
  
• Data standards and procedures (e.g., error correction, quality profiling, naming conventions, comprehensive metadata management) are defined and applied across systems and applications to enable greater efficiency in developing, managing and using company data.²
  
  
• Accountability for data aspects of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley is placed in the hands of data professionals.
  
  
• Stewardship continues to reside within functional departments until a decision is made to manage data as a corporate asset and data management is established as a shared function similar to legal, IT and human resources.

Brown Bag Sessions. Both business and IT stakeholders are susceptible to miracle solutions – usually vendor-provided – that promise a quick and painless solution to a complicated or intransigent problem. By creating a regular forum where business and IT stakeholders learn about emerging technologies together, everyone is better positioned to ask relevant questions when faced with a compelling sales pitch or in-flight magazine article. In addition, leisurely discussion of emerging options can avoid hasty decisions when developing plans and budgets.

The most effective brown bag programs are lively, engaging and varied – so avoid a lockstep format. Leverage external sources such as white papers, web seminars and even vendor demonstrations to challenge status quo beliefs and biases. Examine the realities of the local business model, cultural tendencies, and skill gaps to balance external opportunities against environmental realities. Don’t be afraid to invite other businesses and partners to talk about their experiences and lessons learned in dealing with a particular problem or technology. What would they do differently knowing what they know now?

Establish détente between business and IT by engaging organizational development (OD) or some other obviously neutral party to structure and facilitate the sessions. Consider enlisting the knowledge management team or corporate librarian to capture and make available session proceedings for access by those who couldn’t attend or for reference at planning time.

Rotational Assignment. Companies have traditionally used “temporary” assignments to move high-potential employees around the company as part of executive succession planning and development. The same concept can be used to build cross-functional understanding and sensitivity to frontline issues that benefit alignment. Granted, there are technical skills that may limit rotational opportunities, but many of those skills can be addressed as part of a comprehensive employee development program that includes long-term planning, external coursework, and project or on-the-job learning.

Showcase Success

Our recommendations can help move the most siloed organization toward collaboration without overtly challenging turf. As you show that alignment spreads the burden of justification, increases the value of the initiative and eliminates low level skirmishes for money and talent, even the most rigid “commander” is likely to rally around the effort to align.

References:

1. In case you’re wondering, a database administrator (DBA) is an IT role responsible for structuring data storage; understanding the meaning and use of the data is not part of the job. 
   
   
2. We tend to think that business need for reconcilable reporting and 360º views of customers, partners and suppliers are the only drivers for data management, but in highly siloed and unplanned IT environments, the overhead for supporting and operating a Rube Goldberg architecture loaded with redundant unmanaged data can force the issue. The environment is too brittle to support the business. Financial and human resources are fully occupied with maintenance and support; IT does not have the bandwidth or money to respond to new business needs. The only way to support the business is to redesign the architecture and begin to integrate and manage the data.

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