Achieving better outcomes in IT: forge a path to frequent Alignment
Alignment isn’t a difficult concept, but it seems to be a fundamental challenge for many IT organizations. Alignment of initiatives. Alignment of change.
Why is that?…
Here is a simplified three-step process:
Awareness -> Communication -> Alignment
Awareness
Alignment begins with Awareness. Awareness of the IT landscape. Awareness of what is actually out there and the dependencies between items.
In 8folios.com we call this Dependency Awareness (pages 6–7, a quick read of the PDF, no registration needed).
Awareness is facilitated by one or more tools of shared, linked information. The information represents meta data about the IT landscape:
- The portfolios of items — Applications, Data, Interfaces, Servers, or Technologies. This can even extend to subtle but important items such as SSL certificates.
- The critical attributes on many items such as the Primary Contact and Retirement Date.
- The dependencies between items in the portfolios. The dependencies are the special sauce that dramatically accelerate Awareness.
All the real problems of today are multidimensional… There is no way to fully understand them — thus no way to effectively begin solving them — without at some point literally drawing them out.
- Dan Roam, The Back of the Napkin
Communication
Awareness leads to Communication. Frequent communication.
Communication across teams and the walls in many IT organizations. Communication with impacted owners.
Communication before decisions or initiatives are too far along in the process.
Examples:
- The team responsible for the /customer API will introduce a new version next quarter. Who is consuming the API today? The team wants to discuss the planned changes to the API.
- A major upgrade is planned for the CRM application. What are the inbound or outbound interfaces? What processes are directly reading from the database, or from a copy of the database?
- IT leadership must decide whether to pay for extended support to a database vendor, or upgrade all occurrences of the older version of the database engine. Where is that older version in use today and which applications are impacted?
Communication will result in a new habit of incrementally improving Awareness, where the IT organization will add or enhance information in the tool(s) to close the gaps. For example, what items or dependencies weren’t identified?
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.
Alignment
Communication leads to Alignment, where the goal is to align early and often across the IT organization.
Examples:
- Alignment of initiatives, including alignment of technology-based initiatives.
- Alignment of change.
- Alignment of priorities.
- Alignment of budgets and planned expenditures.
- Alignment of compliance to regulations such as the CCPA.
- Alignment to mitigate cybersecurity risks.
- Alignment to maximize vendor partnerships.
You’ll know the IT organization is on the path to Alignment when I didn’t know we were doing that… is no longer a thought or comment late in the process.
Forge a path
Help your IT organization get their ducks in a row. The journey begins with Awareness, and you’ll need a cross-team tool to conquer this challenge.
Slideware, spreadsheets, and single-user diagramming tools are not sufficient for the journey. These tools do not allow the IT organization to easily maintain, traverse, and analyze the numerous items and dependencies in the IT landscape.
8folios.com is a SaaS solution, doesn’t require any pre-configuration to get started, and offers distinctive analytics for Awareness and inherent Communication. 8folios offers a free, no-hassle Test Drive for five users where you are up and running in five minutes.
Sparking Points
Here are some Sparking Points (a tip of the hat to Phil McKinney of Beyond the Obvious) to stimulate thinking:
- How much time and money is your IT organization wasting to rediscover lost knowledge that is critical for Awareness? (see a tangible formula on page 5 of the same PDF mentioned earlier)
- How long would it take to map your organization’s top five Applications and dependencies? How might the IT organization put that information to work everyday?
- How many Customer-impacting events occurred in the last three months due to a lack of Alignment?
- If the IT organization has Awareness tools and yet there are Alignment challenges, then what are the gaps in the tools, information, or processes?
- Could you establish a method to have impacted teams record I didn’t know we were doing that… moments to pinpoint gaps in Awareness?
