IT-business alignment is still on the CIO agenda

The term "IT-business alignment" has been part of IT industry lexicon for many, many years - and so you might be tempted to think that any story we could tell about how organisations ensure that their IT investments and operations really serve their businesses will have run its course long ago. Still, though, debate rages on - the issue clearly hasn't gone away. Why?

A perpetual process

Our research over the years (we started MWD in 2005 with the aim of anchoring all our research in the context of "advising on IT-business alignment" and it's been something we've been tracking ever since) has led us to the conclusion that although the term makes it sound as if IT-business alignment is a project, the reality is very different. The organisations that have made the most significant strides in this area realise that IT-business alignment is a perpetual process, not a project with a defined end-date and target. There are two reasons for this.

Firstly, things change - all the time. IT priorities and capabilities change; business priorities and strategies change; and personnel change. The target is always moving, in other words. Secondly, there's always room for improvement - any organisation that's embarked on a business process re-engineering exercise will understand that.

Clearly, the current economic environment has shifted the IT-business alignment "target", from both business and technology perspectives. To get an update on what IT-business alignment means for top-level IT executives in the current environment, I recently talked to Ian Dobb (former CIO of Channel 4 and now with Ionico) and Rorie Devine (former CTO of Betfair, currently working with bwin).

Is IT-business alignment important, and how is the issue changing?

First off, I wanted to check - do Dobb and Devine feel that IT-business alignment is still an important topic? Devine was quick to answer, and also echoed the idea that alignment is a process rather than a project: "Asking if alignment is important is like asking someone if making their marriage a success is important.Clearly it takes effort to get things right, but there's no question that it remains important."

At MWD, our experience is that the pressures brought about by the current economic environment mean that the relationship between business and IT has to become closer, rather than more arms-length (we explored this further in our last article, on the topic of IT Governance). So how do Dobb and Devine feel about how the "alignment environment" is changing in the current economic environment?

"In the past, when talking to business leaders we focused too much on the ‘how' and not enough on the ‘what'", says Devine. "However I'm finding that in the current environment, at least here in the UK, there's much more evidence of ‘outside-in', more business-driven thinking - and that's a good thing." Dobb agrees: "There's definitely a new balance in the debate about IT investment. Previously we had frivilous enhacements tabled to change the colour of an application interface because it didn't fit with the company's branding. Those requests have died off.

There's a much more reasoned, sensible environment now." There are still pockets where things aren't so rosy though, as Devine outlines: "just as you can have old-school CIOs, you can have old-school CEOs - people who just see IT as an order-taking organisation that needs to do whatever is requested."