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BUSINESS-IT COLLABORATION GAP
The role of the IT department is to provide the company with the capability of capturing, storing, processing
and disseminating the information, as organised and automated as possible, with as objective to provide
a maximal support to the business objectives. Their role is to design, build and manage a part of the company.
The IT community is in permanent relation with the business community.
Additionally, specific temporary relations with various other stakeholders are created before and during the execution of the project.
The IT community has to have access to the knowledge of the business.
An optimal collaboration between the business community and the IT community is vital to succeed in this endeavour.
Unfortunately, business and IT professionals are unable to bridge the gap between themselves.
What are the causes ?
- The objectives and priorities are different.
- They perform a different type of work: designing and building a system versus using a system
- They ignore of each others domain of knowledge and activities.
- The incentives of both communities are different.
- Their focus an norms are different.
- They have a different culture.
- ...
The collaboration gap can't be solved by increasing the communication, by increasing the coordination,
by reviewing the methodology or by assigning a few people who have to act as a bridge between both communities.
It will only soften some consequences. As these solutions don't focus on the real underlying causes,
they won't solve the gap.
The design of the set of relationships and organisational arrangement is based upon some false assumptions,
which results in an unnatural and disbalanced situation.
This organisation is not efficient and leads to problems. This creates dissatisfaction and distrust
which reinforce the inefficiencies and decreases the quality of the collaboration.
Obviously, this leads to even more issues and thus more dissatisfaction and distrust.
Can the gap be bridged ?
Absolutely! It is mainly a matter of common objectives, breaking
down barriers and putting in place a well-designed organisation with the right capabilities.
Solving the collaboration gap is about applying a deeper understanding :
- of the role of the IT department
- of human organisations
- of information and information processes
- of underlying concepts and principles of systems, and particularly information systems
- of how they have to be built
- of how all this is maintained and managed
- and of how, from the resulting products, services are offered and managed
when (re-)designing the organisation (IT department and the relationship with the business community), when developing the needed capabilities and when improving the exploitation of all the available resources. It's about moving the whole organisation into rightenousness and balance.
SERVICES:
We can assist you in solving the collaboration gap in a sustainable way.
TEE's services are not limited to these services.
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