Meet IT Halfway

Business Managers Share Responsibility

The average tenure for a CIO is approximately two years. That's about all the time it takes to figure out whether a technology project is going to work or not. And if it doesn't, then naturally the problem is a bad CIO, right? Not necessarily.

According to Ron Exler, director of research operations at the Robert Frances Group, the CIO or IT manager may not be entirely to blame. "There has been a lot of discussion about IT projects that need to align with what the businesses are doing," says Exler. "And we're hearing that people have not been looking at the full picture."

In fact, IT and business executives have historically looked at technology as an accessory to a line of business (LOB). But that's where problems start. 'The prevailing view is that IT is a cost center for most enterprises," Exler writes, "while most CEOs, CFOs, and LOB executives are charged with making profits for the company. For that reason, IT has to align with those executives in their initiatives, not the other way around."

It's difficult for IT to align with LOBs, however, because typically IT executives don't get to decide what technologies the budget will be spent on. More likely, the LOB manager will make the decision, purchase the technology, and then drop it in the IT department's lap — expecting everything to be seamless from that point.

To help combat these unrealistic expectations, Exler suggests that the perspective on the IT-LOB relationship be shifted in an evolutionary way. LOB managers need to learn to trust IT executives and fully understand how technology is going to benefit their business objectives. IT executives, for their part, need to understand what business they're in and how technology can assist in and improve upon the activities of the LOB.

Change won't come easy. "But I think it's something that we'll see ... over the next couple of years," says Exler.

— Jerri L. Ledford

Jerri L. Ledford [jledford6568@comcast.net] is a business and technology writer and author of Web Services: Understanding Service Level Management (Contentcan Ltd., 2002).

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