Who'll stop the rain

Business vs IT? Business and IT? Alignment? Data as the third angle. How people in the data-business could look at the long pursued Business and IT alignment and take the third angle.

As long a I remember the rain's been falling down. The first line of "Who'll Stop the Rain" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. This song comes to mind when I think of the search for hooks in the business and businesses where IT managers, consultants, system integrators and software vendors can attach their BI and Data quality services and products.

These consultants c.s. look for a way to appeal to the decision makers in the organizations they target for their products and services. They're trying to get on the agenda, preaching the benefits of their approaches, quality methods and tools over and over again.

It must feel like the neverending rain for these business 'targets'.

George Colony of Forrester Research says (in 2006): "IT is not the way to go, let's call it 'BT'"¹. Already the change of the term "Information Technology" to "Business Technology" should make our solutions more appealing to the business. And, he says, I(B)T should stand shoulder to shoulder with business to confront the challenges the businesses face. Understand each others' domains and limitations.

IT & business still circle different circles and read different magazines. At least here in the lowlands of Western Europe. And, although the inflow of digital natives (first article Marc Prensky and second one) entering the business arena is growing every year, there still is a lot of 'senior' business management and 'senior' IT management that do not understand each other's language and don't go to each other's churches.

In the church analogy each 'group' visits their own church and listens to the preacher, priest or vicar, or whatever the name of their speaker is. They hardly ever go to the other's church. Therefore they seldom hear from the visionaries themselves the why, what and how. Digital natives are, I fear, necessary to create George Colony's "BT world".

As a descendant of the church of Information Technology I was sent out to do missionary work. We organized seminaries (sic) and invited our peers. Most people understood what we said. Sometimes we dared to speak in the domains of the other churches and non-believers. That was not very successful. Sometimes people listened and nodded understandingly but then continued their 'heresy'. We could not convert them and have them use our tools and methods.

Recently I decided to get out of this 'missionary position'² and try another angle. I did this because I could not imagine that the amount of effort that was put into the missionary work could weigh up to the results. Regardless of efforts, not enough business people were helped with their issues.

My new angle is Data. I see a divine triangle in Business, IT and Data. Together they make one and separately we can't do without the other. In Data I see the product (and nutrition) of business(processes). IT makes it possible to monitor and steer the business(processes) with information and is a logistic service provider. In terms of responsibilities, it is clear to most people who has knowledge about the business processes and the inserted and resulting data. This, of course, is the 'Business'. The Business domain is the only domain that can be responsible for the contents, in terms of meaning, of the data. The care for data is the binding factor between Business and IT.

Lately I play the part (role) of 'Architect' for Information production environments. We use the third angle approach. The questions we now ask business management are:

1. What is the status of the Information Architecture and Governance. Do you have a clear and managed picture of your information assets and related data sources.

2. Is there anything we can do to help you with your data?

Absolute preconditions for effective data governance, quality and MDM initiatives are: business ownership of the information household and a certain level of maturity in the information architecture, governance and management. So if the picture painted in response to question 1 is not pretty, we are left with only the data-logistical (technical) problems to be tackled.

If we do come to second base here, and start talking about the solutions that may help the organization in the data area such as Master Data Management, the challenges will be in the business 'playing field'. There will be challenges yes, but if Information Governance is set up and the organization is familiar with it, it will be more like implementing "BT".

We can see the awareness of the need to better organize information within companies slowly growing but has it reached adolescence yet? And is it a bad sign that the English Wikipedia item about Information Architecture is in dire need of revision?³

notes

¹ http://blogs.forrester.com/george_colony/08-01-30-my_view_it_bt

² http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/dyche/archives/2007/10/the_missionary.php

³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture