The IT and Business Diplomat
SOA and Business Alignment Integration Consortium

I came across an article the other day: 

CIOs must bridge business gap
VNUNet.com - UK
Chief information officers (CIOs) need to work hard to bridge a growing gap between IT and the business, analyst Gartner has warned. ...

Rather than talking, writing and blogging about the symptoms why not put some focus on the root problem or problems which are cultural and communication. This way we can start working our way towards solutions and paths to alignment enlightenment.

If we take a look at the communication and cultural styles of both IT and business, we can start to see some of the disconnects.

What alignment issues are not is; intellectual challenges, business goals or personal mandates. Some of these issues might have reared their ugly heads in the past but now are not really something that is a main barrier to alignment. IT understands that they need to deliver value to the business and do it in a cost and time effective manner otherwise they will be out of a job. Business understands that much of the organizational infrastructure is dependent upon a healthy IT platform and system and that IT innovation can give them a competitive advantage in today’s marketplace. This was recently drilled home to business in the advent of the 3rd wave of technology, e-business. You were either leveraging the web or you lost customers and market share.

Thus this leaves us with 2 underlying challenges to alignment nirvana: culture and communication.

I will address these in the next post and follow up with what can be done about it.

Cheers,

Michael