Aligning IT and Business
Posted by swlc on February 18, 2009
Catchy headline. “Aligning IT and Business”. Hey, everybody wants that! It’s like Mom and apple pie in our industry.
I don’t want it.
From the perspective of PRODUCT development, in contrast to writing internal applications for business, you are starting with a definitional problem.
First, if you produce software products or services, the folks who create and deliver those products are not IT. They are the Product Developers. The IT group manages the company’s computing infrastructure.
Second, who are these Business folks? If you’re talking about sales and marketing communications, then yes, those are Business folks. But if you’re talking about the Product Managers, then they also are part of the Product Development team.
You should not be aligning two things that should not have been separate in the first place.
A central tenet of agile product development is that all the involved parties are working together from a common plan to produce the product. The Product Managers are designing and producing a software product, and they should know how it works, because they are sitting every day with the development teams (whether coders, testers, UX design, writers, etc). The software developers should understand the cost of adding “that one more cool feature”, in real money terms. Everyone should understand the customers, how they will use the product, what problems are being solved for the customer, and how the product compares to competitor’s products.
If you are still separating your software developers from your product managers, then you’re thinking like Chrysler.
If you have removed this artificial separation, you’re thinking like Toyota.
I’d rather be part of Toyota.
