The Agility Series — 5 — Team ID Theft
IT to Business Identity Theft
The greatest tragedy I have seen in my time as a consultant is the misalignment between skill, responsibility, and effort. Value comes from the right people doing the right work. When some start to try to provide value that someone else really should be bringing, it is often a sign of distrust that leads to corporate dysfunction. The kind that prevents quality and flow. It hurts the bottom line because ultimately the customer is not getting the best product/service that could be offered from these teams.
In my time in IT, the most common form of this is identity theft between the business and IT. Namely, the business will get so frustrated at IT solutions not meeting their need, they slowly start to dictate how the software should be crafted. IT begins to see the business becoming so concerned with trying to tell IT how to make software, that the business slows down telling IT what it wants the software to do. To fix this, IT starts telling the business what the software should be doing for the customer. People start to resent each other because work responsibility boundaries are violated in unhealthy ways.
The worst I have seen of this is when business, say Marketing, takes under their org chart the IT group. I have also seen IT decide to exert power and gain control over Marketing politically.
This dysfunctional behavior is very much a symptom of a false belief, a belief that the other group of people cannot or will not do what they should, so we will do it for them. It’s immature in fact. No matter how much the executive or director is paid, once they start down a path of disrespect in this way, they are not working for the benefit of the company.
Correction is simple to say, hard to do. Yet, here is my most effective 7 step repeatable formula.
1. Define the true role of the business as it relates to defining what software should do.
2. Inform the business of this definition and that they will be empowered to accomplish this effort.
3. Define the true role of IT in designing and developing the solutions.
4. Inform IT of this definition and that they will be given the opportunity and tools to make good designs that result in adaptable software.
5. Give Business Process Owners the tools and help they need to have the voice they should have to communicate the needs of the Domain.
6. Give IT the resources they need to model and develop consistently and accurately behaved software.
7. Get feedback on where they are succeeding and failing at their roles from both groups and make sure self-reflection is done before complaining about others.
Are you trying to solve this identity theft in your company now? Are you able to define the roles in spirit and in truth or is that a struggle? Do you have ways to make this work fun and easier to do? If you don’t have a way to empower your people, we might want to chat.
Even better is when there are no two teams. Only one per focus area. Then everyone has all the skin in the game to meet customer needs the best the company can do today.
“But wait. What about the business group or IT department that is given their charge and is incapable of doing their job?” you might be asking. If that happens, now you have cleared up the politics and can deal with real performance problems. If domain experts do not know their domain, fix it. If IT does not know how to design adaptable systems, fix it. At least you have more leverage to make those changes. Without curing this identity theft, you have no idea who is maladjusted for the work they need to do.
I hope this helps you solve this identity theft problem if you are experiencing the rut of dysfunction when people are not really providing their focused value.
Until then…
