It’s common to see a clear line dividing business and IT at companies. I think I saw it in almost all the places I worked. There are IT people and the rest of the company. IT department is usually well distinguished from others, and I see so many problems emerging from that. And the hardest part: this is not seen as a problem, or at least not enough attention is given to it. But why should companies pay more attention to it?
As a business strategy companies define goals and vision, that all departments should work together to achieve. Once IT is put as a side part, the company’s vision and goals are not properly incorporated as part of the IT product’s vision/goals. Funny enough is to see it happening in all business sectors, including in technology enterprise.
For instance, I worked in an IT company where we had many plans for the software, each product/team had its goals, many focus on modernization and technical improvements. Of course, we all had stakeholders that were our source of requirements for new features, and so on. And those stakeholders were bringing requests that were originated from the company’s vision, like adaption or improvements in the system to enable them to expand the business. Every time it happened, the product managers had to make a lot of reprioritization, inform other stakeholders about the delay affecting their requests, and so on. Now comes the gold question: why wasn’t this expansion plan shared since the beginning of the project to allow the product managers to keep it in their scope view?
I am glad you asked. 🙂 Because business and IT were not integrated as it should be. It can happen for many reasons, and a plausible one is to keep the strategy of the company in secret to delay the competitor’s reaction or any other strategic reasons. Therefore, only those who are directly involved in developing the business project knows about it, and IT is only informed once all is settled and ready to be released. Even then, I still think it is solvable. Why not involve at least the VP of product or, even better, the affected product managers, in the development of those projects?! If a company can not trust its employees, then this is another problem and should as well be solved.
For me, it looks like the root cause of this problem is that IT is seen as another company, a provider that delivers software for business. And just to be clear, I am not blaming any side here, I’ve seen both, IT and business, supporting this behavior. But please, stop seeing us as the weird IT guys, and please my IT fellows, stop being proud of being so independent. All requirements should be shared since the business plan is done because we also need to do our plans to catch up on the business improvements and expansions.
Last, but not least, sellers: you are not product managers, you don’t have enough technical understanding to give clients a deadline! That would be really kind of you to talk with the product managers before closing a new contract or a new sale. It would make everyone happy, IT, since they don’t need to create low-quality software either work crazy hours, the clients, that would get better quality software in a realistic timeframe, and you can still get your sale commission. 😛
Well, this post seems more like a therapy session than anything else. But anyway, recognizing it is an issue is the first step, and it can improve a lot the work environment and result’s quality.