More useful ICT, how?
ICT can only be useful when it is aligned with business needs. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to better align business and technology; it is all about the context. And that's why so many good-intended initiatives fail. People misinterpret the context and apply good-but-inadequate-for-the-context measures. They make things worse instead of improving them. As a consequence they lose confidence and start to believe that structured approaches don't pay off.
We, at Continuum, know from experience that structured approaches do pay off, provided one succeeds in managing the corresponding risks:
- People misinterpret the context because they don't see the big picture. And who is to blame? In the past, far too many approaches have oversimplified the problem in order to better sell a solution. We, however, apply a holistic approach, simultaneously taking more than one dimension of alignment between business and technology into consideration. Indeed, alignment of business and technology incorporates aspects of Governance, Organization and Enterprise Architecture.
- People get carried away, mostly by lack of experience, and start inventing solutions. Interesting, but not very efficient. Or they stick to best practices, which in most cases regretfully only apply to specific contexts. Therefore it is imperative to ensure expertise is available to ensure there is a good match of specific solutions to the needs of your organization.
- People simply get lost in the vastness of domains, technologies and methodologies. Initiatives become either a holy crusade or simply die in a corner. What's missing is a balance between vision and experience. That's why we lead by example and convince organizations and people by proving Business Technology Management works in real life projects.