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Agile Development Conference & Better Software Conference West
June 2–7, 2013 | Las Vegas, NV
The IT/Business Partnership
Andy Jordan PMP is the founder and president of Roffensian Consulting. Andy is a seasoned business professional with experience in many industries on two continents. After a career managing high profile, business critical projects for many organisations Andy moved into leadership of project management offices and built a reputation for building, rescuing and improving this key function. His approach of tailoring processes to the style and ability of the organisation, and focusing on the development of project staff rather than the short sighted approach of meeting project deliverables at all costs has repeatedly shown dramatic results.
At the risk of over generalizing the situation, 10 to 15 years ago the relationship between IT and business departments was rather strained. The concerns about Y2K saw huge amount of investments being directed to technology projects and away from business initiatives, often leaving business department owners unable to execute on the strategies that they wanted to pursue because there simply wasn’t any money. After Y2K, the pendulum swung in the other direction with investment being directed heavily toward the business departments to try and make up for the period of heavy IT investment.
Nowadays there is much more of a balance between IT and the business groups that it supports. There is recognition that the two departments need one another more than ever before as the separation between the two becomes less and less defined in the real world--more and more business deliverables rely on technology, and technology is creating new business opportunities that never existed before. However, in many organizations there is still a little bit of a divide, and to really leverage one another there needs to be a true partnership between IT and the business departments that it supports.
Focus on common goals
The first thing that needs to be recognized (by both groups) is that IT doesn’t exist simply to manage systems, it’s there to facilitate business …
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"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein |