George specializes in best practices in aligning business processes and technology.

Bridging the “Business-IT Gap”

By George Wellock, Senior Management Consultant

How to Close the Communication Gap Between Business and IT Teams

Is there a software upgrade or implementation in your company’s future?

Most companies face three problems when approaching these projects — characterized as the Business-IT Gap:

Your company can solve the Business-IT Gap by insisting that all stakeholders share and accurately document:

  • current state processes,
  • future state processes, and
  • business line item requirements that express your “voice of the users.”

These requirements can then be validated against the system capabilities for developing a strong, collaborative project plan through an iterative analysis. Leaving one of these three components out of the equation is a risk.

Use templates to document the “big picture”

Maintaining visibility of the “big picture” is key — processes, business requirements, system requirements, design, and probable solution. Simple yet effective tools can provide a common understanding to business and IT teams, and can be adapted to accommodate dynamic, changing projects.

Standard project management templates can be developed in common Microsoft formats or other software applications that provide solid business process documentation (steps and tasks). They also can demonstrate the functionality of the system, and capture the users' business requirements / resultant system requirements, design features and components.

For example, Pragmatek’s Business Process Technology Alignment (BPTA) methodology includes standard Visio templates for process flow diagrams. These templates provide the “big picture” for the entire team. Excel templates support the gathering of requirements to easily facilitate the most tedious parts of data collections.

Using these tools enable your project teams to react and adjust to software project changes, such as unexpected market conditions, organization changes, funding adjustments, and new business functionality priorities.

Effective communication bridges the gap

If your organization doesn’t bridge the Business-IT Gap, your projects may falter due to a lack of understanding the “big picture.” You may miss the mark because one part of your organization doesn’t understand or effectively communicate the project’s needs to the rest of the team.

While these problems may seem out of control in many companies today, BPTA templates, tools and techniques can be deployed to help close the communication gap between business and the IT organization. They are a critical part of a carefully planned approach to a winning implementation that builds upon best practices for solving the three most common problems in most software projects: people, processes, and technology.