“…noticeable disconnect between business units and corporate headquarters regarding how much impact IT will have on specific business functions…execs have to understand how their IT investments further their business goals”

One of the main differences between professions like engineering and architecture, and IT, is that for many years they have been fully documented.

Like IT, the very complex projects they manage involve many related assets, processes and people. Yet unlike IT, the business and the professionals can easily understand each other, disasters are fairly rare and generally there is mutual respect and understanding.

Why? Because they have simple means of communicating with each other. After all, how could complex things like skyscrapers or bridges be built without blueprints or engineering diagrams?

It is this easy to understand “big picture” of the business and IT relationship that has been missing.

To create this picture, and enable business and IT to speak a common language, understanding dataflows is critical. It is the understanding, documenting, and engineering of them which is key to managing complexity.

If we have a simple picture of how each dataflow moves across and through the assets of the business, the responsibilities, roles, risks and costs of every IT resource (or group of IT resources) employed in support of each business activity (and/or set of business activities) can be clearly visualised and, thus, understood.

By attaching value meta data to data flows and cost information to IT assets, we can start to assess the ratio between IT support costs and the value of the contribution of IT to the business.

Which means IT can speak to the board in the language it understands – that of money. It also means that IT will be fully documented, providing a standard for governance and a foundation for professionalism.

Critical times for the reputation for IT are fast approaching. For example, in the UK, the Companies Act of 2006 comes into force during October 2009. Directors and managers (including IT) could be jailed if they fail to ensure that appropriate IT systems are in place to store and retrieve data and that electronic communication with shareholders is robust and secure.

Without full documentation of assets, people and services and a clear understanding of how data flows through the business, many IT professionals, at least in the UK, could find themselves with more to worry about than a dubious reputation.

PJW

www.stromasoftware.com

Very interesting survey, and the disconnects are worrying. Unfortunately waiting for a hero to show up doesn't constitute much of a response. In my view there are two important initial steps. Firstly find a boardroom-ready CIO and then make her primary task to ensure that her boardroom colleagues understand their IT-related responsibilities. Then we might get somewhere.

I get into this in a big way in my new book - The IT Value Stack - A boardroom guide to IT leadership. More details can be found at my blog - The IT Value Stack.