Forrester for CIOs
About this Blog:
Analysis about the state of IT for the forward-thinking CIO, from a technology and market research point of view.
IT Is A Business Unit Too
IT should be an integral part of the business and shouldn’t be thought of as an independent organization.
This week, I talked with an IT group that had an organizational unit called “IT Business Management” with the charter to help IT run like a business. Well, it’s about time! I know a lot of IT strategists and consultants push the idea that IT should be an integral part of the business and shouldn’t be thought of as an independent organization. And that may be what it should be, but it’s not what it is today. Today’s IT is by and large a separate organization even when it is distributed across multiple business units.
In many companies IT is a large, complex business unit in its own right with a significant chunk of the business’s operating budget. When CIOs control hundreds of millions of their company’s dollars, shouldn’t they be thinking about what business value they are delivering on that capital? And isn’t a great way to do that by looking at and managing IT like a business?
When I first started talking about building a capability model for IT, I received a lot of blank stares and comments like: “Why would anyone want to do that?” My question is: ”Why wouldn’t everyone want to do that?” IT execs spend a significant portion of their time managing business demand to fit current IT resources but very little time improving IT’s ability to respond to increasing business demand. An IT capability model provides an excellent starting place to view IT like a business and identify what is most important to IT’s success and where to invest the few dollars we have to make it better. Many architects I talk with are having real success with business executives using capability maps to focus the conversation and their attention on what parts of the business are most important. With an IT capability map, we can do the same thing for IT.
Building an IT capability map isn’t all that difficult. Last month I ran a building IT capability map session at our EA Leadership Board meeting. The group was highly energized and exceedingly creative. We created multiple perspectives of an IT capability model and then rolled them all into a common view. Of course the real value comes with getting the IT leadership on board and applying the model to real problems.
Later this quarter I will be publishing a report on building and using IT capability maps. Let me know what you would like to see in the report. Better yet, if you have already developed your IT capability map - let’s talk.
by Jeff Scott
Previous Post: The Fed CIO Looks To The Cloud - Should You? Next Post: A Different Kind of Complexity Holds Business-IT Alignment Hostage
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
