Back in mid-December, I posted “You Know You’ve Reached Level 3 When…“ As the BSG Alliance multi-company research project that has been examining Reaching Level 3 Business-IT Maturity shifts gears from its research to its reporting phase, I want to revisit that headline. Here are some ‘one-liners’ that are being discussed in today’s WebEx session for the participating companies:
You know you’ve reached Level 3 Business-IT Maturity when…
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There is no separate IT Governance structure – it is converged with Business Governance
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There is no separate IT Portfolio – it is integrated into the Business Portfolio
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There is no separate IT Strategy – it is integrated into the Business Strategy
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There is no separate IT Architecture – it is a component of the Enterprise Architecture
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There are no separate IT Relationship Managers – Relationship Management is a widespread and diverse Role
How do those statements feel to you? Are you already there with any of them? All of them? If you reached those conditions, how would things be different around IT decision making and value extraction?
Filed under: Business-IT Governance, Demand Maturity, IT Management, IT Maturity, Portfolio Management Tagged: | business governance, business portfolio, business strategy, Enterprise Architecture, IT Architecture, IT governance, IT portfolio, IT relationship manager, IT strategy
This work on Business-IT Maturity reminds me of the converse of Level 3 Business-IT Maturity. I have seen it more the norm than the exception that the maturity level of the “organization,” “business-side,” and IT are incongruent. For example, the organization is well established in the market, in some cases despite itself, or the business side has quickly matured in response to a large revenue growth, but IT did not receive the investment necesary to keep pace and mature along with the business.
This incongruency causes stress in all parts of the organization. Unfortunately, the incongruency is frequency not recognized by the various constituents, leading to misaligned expectations of each other and fostering discontent. It is the recognition of this misaligment at senior levels of the organization which begins to bring the sides together. Of course just using the term “sides” in this context points to a maturity issue (there shouldn’t be sides…)
Good observation, Russ. I’ve noted previously (though probably not often enough) that we call this a Business-IT Maturity Model because there are 2 sides – business demand maturity and IT supply maturity. It is easy (natural?) to get out of whack – sometimes demand is pulling on supply, and other times supply is leading demand. They never get too far out of what because if they begin to do so, there’s usually a change of CIO (either spending too much in the supply ahead of demand scenario, or spending too little in the demand ahead of supply case). But sometimes, if there’s a rapid shift in market dynamics, or a change in business leadership, there can be a rapid incogruety as you note – with lots of stress and pain. One of our visions for level 3 is the ability to rapidly flex up and down – on demand – without breaking a sweat!