Friday, February 17, 2012

Aligning Technology with Business Needs

The buzz word in most corporate offices today is "alignment", specifically, ensuring that investments in technology are linked to business goals. The best way to achieve this is through a shared governance process. Typically, IT is responsible for making all the technical decisions. However, best practices have shown that the best decisions are made with input from both business units and IT. Jeanne W. Ross and Peter Weill, authors of "Six Decisions Your IT People Shouldn't Make (Harvard Business Review), explain that many non-technical executives leave key technology decisions to IT executives because they don't feel comfortable enough with technology to manage it in detail. The results, say Ross and Weill, are technology choices that inadvertently clash with corporate strategy. IT should however, certainly be responsible for decisions regarding technology standards, operations, and organization, but not decisions that determine the impact upon a company's business strategy.

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