How? Say again?
Sounds all great, but does this all have anything to do with the day-to-day job of ICT projects? Don't they operate at an implementation and/or tactical level, and have little impact on strategy? To better understand why they should care, let's look closer at how we implemented Business Technology (BT) in the field.
We implement business critical projects in large organizations. For this purpose, we have teams of well-trained, highly educated experienced professionals. They all see the big picture, no matter what their role in the project is. They all have a general understanding of all the dimensions of the BT-model and,they all have the specific skills required for their specific function, whether they are an architect, analyst or developer.
As a company, we assume responsibility within the project at all levels so we can guide and mentor both our own and the customer staff. Our people are taught no-nonsense commitment with the primary goal of successfully delivering the needed solution.
During the execution of our projects, confidence at the customer side increases and our understanding of the context grows which results in a process of real process improvement. No rocket science is need, but a keen understanding of the context, getting the big picture and the customer needs and mapping these to the model. The partnership defines the ambition level, and keeps planning & implementing process improvement in small iterations. When needed the team re-evaluates, all this while keeping in mind the very first condition: successfully delivering the solution needed.
What are the conditions for success:
- The interaction between business and technology is complex and it needs a holistic approach to achieve real process improvements and business benefit.
- Best practices are available (and suitable!) in all domains and even widespread for domains such as operations and infrastructure. These include ITIL, ASL, BISL, CoBiT, EA, Scrum, RUP, PMBOK, Balanced Scorecard, CMMI,...and they need to be applied when suitable in the right measure for the context available.
- Getting theory to pay off requires experience; that's why our senior staff show the way and lead by example!
No less, no more.