Bob Lambert

In a new post at Insurance Networking News Ara Trembly provides a balanced perspective on IT/business misalignment (Business/IT Misalignment: Whose Responsibility?).  He describes the problem as cultural, more amenable to relational than management solutions.    His conclusion sums it up: “Take a geek/suit to lunch today!”

To me (speaking as an IT professional) IT should take the initiative to solve the problem.  Quoting Trembly, “business executives … make decisions, but they are for the most part mystified at the magical incantations and actions that produce IT results” and “IT people, on the other hand, are jealous of the sheer power wielded over them by business people who just don’t get IT.”  In other words, business people contend with an emotional and a substantive problem, “fear and lack of knowledge,” while IT people have only the emotional problem of jealousy.

If we take the emotions out of the picture (its just a job, right?) then that leaves IT folks with knowledge that business people need in order to maximize the value of IT and efficiency of business processes.  Ever since mainframes roamed the prehistoric rain forests of the ’60s application developers have often been the most knowledgeable about how business processes really work, understanding both the intricacies of the application logic and how business people use the system to get things done.  These individuals can add value to the business discussion by bringing their knowledge to the table in a way that business people can understand.

In many organizations IT manages the forum in which these conversations can occur: the requirements process.  In my experience a good requirements process is long enough for the business and IT teams to get to know each other, offers generous opportunity for both structured and unstructured conversations about business needs, and brings together knowledgeable business and IT participants.  IT is typically able to bring the insights of seasoned application developers to the fore in a well planned requirements effort.

Yes, everyone has responsibility to “cultivate personal relationships based on mutual need and respect,” but IT can and should bring substance to the relationship in requirements definition.

While many organizations understand the value of managing the information resource, for many others information management remains abstract and difficult to define.  In an effort to make it concrete here’s a hypothetical proposal to provide an Enterprise Information Architect for a hypothetical organization that really needs one.

Today: inconsistent data of uncertain quality blurs enterprise view and restricts planning

Today managers, planners, and analysts lack the information required to run the organization as a single enterprise rather than a collection of diverse units.

• Data quality in IT applications varies to the point that, outside financials, it is impossible to gather consistent data supporting an enterprise view of operations.
  • Application development efforts have focused narrowly on departmental interests without accounting for enterprise concerns, making application data incomplete in describing business processes and inconsistent with data in other applications.
  • Focus on departmental concerns and tight development timelines has resulted in incomplete validation of data critical to the enterprise but not critical to the application’s focus.  For example, customer demographics are not critical to the sales process and therefore zip codes and telephone numbers are not consistently collected at point of sale, substantially reducing value of market analysis based on sales data.
• Enterprise planners work with only the highest level summaries of operational data, those summaries suffer large margins of error, and planners cannot definitively answer questions required to make critical business decisions.
• Regulators have questioned the validity and repeatability of reporting because of the organization’s heavy reliance on spreadsheets and manual processes in gathering and compiling data for reports.

Solution: enable sound planning and management by identifying data assets and setting processes to manage them

Empower an Enterprise Information Architect to lead an effort that (1) identifies data that describes the organization, (2) defines how to integrate and improve quality of that data, and (3) improves the ability of information technology to maintain data quality.

(1) Lead definition of an Enterprise Information Architecture identifying information required to manage the organization as a single integrated enterprise, and data quality standards that ensure that data supports enterprise goals.

• Identify and define events and objects critical to the enterprise

• Identify and define relationships among those events and objects and attributes that describe them

• Classify data managed by the organization by type (operational, statistical, financial, decision support, etc.) and define standards for managing and integrating each type.
• Compile the above into a plan that explicitly supports the enterprise strategic plan

(2) Working with senior business managers, put in place a program of data quality improvement that plans and executes specific measures and sustained commitment to improving data quality in business processes and IT applications

• Identify the business group responsible for maintaining quality and integrity of each business object, event, relationship, and attribute

• Identify for each data item of interest to the enterprise its “system of origination” and “system of record”.

• System of origination is the application that provides the entry point of a given data object to the organization.
• System of record is the application that is the source of record for the data object.

• Define and deploy standards and practices for for business process and IT application definition that support data quality and integrity standards

(3) Working with senior IT managers define and put in place standards for application requirements definition, data management, and metadata management to

• Define and deploy application development and interface standards that support data quality objectives.
• Ensure that application development efforts support enterprise data quality
• Continually monitor new developments in data management best practices and make that information available to the enterprise.

To me, calling someone a “user” contributes to the gulf between IT and other business people.

Most of us don’t think about it and say “user” or “end-user”. Those who do think about it say something like client, customer, or business customer, or something similar.  Sometimes these terms work and sometimes they seem contrived, but there’s a better way.

Lior Arussy of the Strativity Group argues that what we call our customers is critical to effectively serving them (http://www.crmxchange.com/focus_customer/Oct06_2.asp). According to Arussy the problem is that many of us use terms for customers “based on their role in our process, encouraging a “one size fits all” approach that treats all customers the same. The diversity and complexity of customers is subsequently ignored and replaced with a customer that does not exist but who fits perfectly within the organization’s business model. The customer is thus subjected to the company’s processes and efficiency needs rather than the other way around.”

When we in IT call them “users” we do the same thing. Rather than thinking about a business person’s role in a business process, we think about them in terms of how they use “our” system. This encourages us to think narrowly about how, for example, a recruiter uses a personnel workflow system. The word “user” encourages us to disconnect from the business process rather than understanding how the system fits into the hiring process as a whole.

Maybe I’m exaggerating and this one small point doesn’t matter much. However, in most organizations there is a a communications gap between IT and business, and as the service provider it is IT’s responsibility to bridge the gap. Communications gaps are made up of lots of little habits of thinking and practice, and this is one of them.

So what should you call the user of a business application? When I’m talking generally about business people who use IT applications, I use the term business people, which after all is what they are. When I’m talking about the users of a specific system I try to use the term that everyone else in the organization uses for what they do, like “financial analyst” or “recruiter” or “production line supervisor.”

I hope that being specific and correct about business people’s role encourages me to understand the system I’m building in business context, making it easier for me to build the application exactly as they need it.