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The goals of Business / IT Alignment are simple to express: |
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Optimize Improved Business Performance through IT Innovation
Optimize the Value of IT Expenditures for Business Priorities
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Different Orientations and Knowledge Domains |
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Different Speeds, Priorities and Constraints |
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Different Modeling Tools |
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Different Activity Levels |
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Strategy |
> CxO Alignment
> Business Strategy <=> Vendor Roadmaps
> Business Transformation <=> Technology Initiatives |
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Tactics |
> Business Re-engineering <=> IT Development Programs
> Business Improvements <=> IT Projects |
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Execution |
> Requirements, Detailed Designs and Implementation Plans
> Service Level Agreements |
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Among these complications, one major challenge to increasing
Business / IT Alignment stands out: |
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Many Changing Boundary Conditions
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| Business: |
Customers, Markets, Competition, Regulation and more |
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IT:
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Technology, Skills Availability, Service Options and more |
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Because of this, increasing Business / IT Alignment requires
a major commitment: |
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On-Going Collaborative Planning between Business and IT
in All Areas and at All Levels
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In the most competitive companies, the challenge of "Business / IT Alignment" is overtaken by the "Continuous Improvement Organization", where business operations, business process development and IT are highly integrated.
What can be done to move in that direction? |
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| Business / IT planning is based on design and review of Business / IT processes. Accordingly, Business / IT Alignment requires heavy use of a particular competency: |
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Collaborative Solutions Development Capability
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Collaborative solutions development capability is the ability to lead and/or contribute to group process analysis, design, communication and consensus building.
This is a scarce resource.
It is scarce within IT, where technologists may not have highly developed communication and leadership skills, and where process analysis and design may be as much an art as a science.
It is also scarce on the business side, where there may be little training or experience to provide a basis for process analysis and design skills.
And yet collaborative solutions development is needed in every phase of every Business / IT project and initiative, from visioning and strategy, through requirements gathering and recommendations, down to detailed design and implementation planning.
The net is: collaborative solutions development capability
is the critical "bottleneck" resource of Business / IT Alignment.
There is no substitute for this human activity and the human results that it produces. Where collaborative solutions development capability is lacking, Business / IT Alignment falters.
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What would be the effect on Business / IT Alignment if collaborative solutions development capabilities could be broadly increased,
both within IT and within IT client organizations?
How could that be accomplished?
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ActionMap believes the answer to the first question is:
"Very positive".
ActionMap believes the answer to the second question is:
"With the ActionMap Toolkit."
The ActionMap Toolkit is a set of whiteboard and automated procedures for
collaborative solutions development that has been proven in hundreds of engagements
with organizations like HP, Chevron, Hunt-Wesson and PG&E. The ActionMap Toolkit originated as a solution to the challenges of Business/IT communications, and has always stayed close to that starting point.
Our experience is that the ActionMap Toolkit can easily and reliably overcome all of the complicating factors for Business/IT Alignment described above.
As a "bridge language" between Business and IT, the ActionMap Toolkit has a unique set of critical success factors:
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Reliable and effective |
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Fast and easy to start, learn and use |
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Widely applicable and highly scalable |
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Combines rigorous process development with strong consensus building |
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Translates rapidly across languages, cultures and areas of expertise |
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With the ActionMap Toolkit, we can deliver increased collaborative solutions development capability where needed on short notice, and transfer that increased capability to your organization for the long term, for all the uses you may have for it.
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If you would like to achieve breakthrough results in Business / IT Alignment,
let ActionMap provide you with a demonstration session on a situation of interest to you now, to show you how the ActionMap Toolkit can accelerate the results you're looking for.
You will find this demonstration session valuable in terms of both giving you insights about the situation you're focusing on and for assessing the tools that you need to work on it.
Click here for more information about the ActionMap Toolkit.
Click here for examples of how and where the ActionMap Toolkit can be applied.
Click here for examples of engagements delivered using the ActionMap Toolkit.
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