Business-IT alignment

Process often goes hand in hand with a close business-IT alignment, which is a key factor in developing a positive IT environment. Employees tend to be happier when they understand how their efforts fit in the big picture and help the company achieve its goals.

Tim Hudson says the shift to a closer business-IT alignment has been underway at his Fortune 100 healthcare company for several years, dating back to when his title changed from Technical Analyst III to Principal Business Technical Analyst III.

"I was asked to be more involved in the business side," he says. That includes helping negotiate maintenance contracts and attending meetings to discuss business objectives.

He adds that in the past IT would drive technology deployments and often come up with technologies the business wasn't sure how to use. Now it's the other way around.

"It works better this way, with the business driving IT," Hudson says. "There's not a lot of time wasted" working on projects that never come to fruition.

Wasted time is a significant issue in organizations that lack a coherent business-IT alignment and a process for requesting IT resources. David Goebel, a Web developer for a state unemployment agency, says he's approached "from all angles" to handle projects.

Although there are some processes in place for users to request projects, in practice most clients approach him directly with what they invariably describe as an urgent need. That often means there's not enough time for proper planning and testing, which leads to problems with the finished product. Other efforts are abandoned shortly after deployment, because they weren't really needed in the first place, he says.

Like Dargel, he's thinking about a career change, possibly into project management.

That may be an astute career move on Goebel's part, because companies are looking for people with a mix of skills. For example, Hasbro's Schwinn says he doesn't hire pure programmers anymore. In fact, he says he hires mostly from business schools.

Jim Hall, a professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, agrees, noting that Sarbanes-Oxley is forcing companies to audit IT functions in a way they should have been doing all along. Payroll, for example, requires sophisticated understanding of accounting, transaction processing, databases and other technical skills.

"How do you get all those skills in one person? You don't," he says. To compensate, companies use a team approach that is "imperfect," because the accounting and IT people don't understand each other's disciplines well enough.

"There's a whole career here, starting at the entry level," he says. "There will be a real demand in the future for CIOs and CEOs who understand audits and technology better than [their counterparts] do today."

Motivation through innovation

Investing in core functions that provide competitive advantage and automating or outsourcing context functions can help keep your IT staff invigorated, says Lance Perry, vice president of IT customer strategy and success at Cisco. "Keep more and more core activities on their plate and less and less context," Perry says.

Schwinn agrees, noting that as Hasbro improves its operational capabilities, it can create new opportunities for its IT staff. "You're getting people into more exciting opportunities than day-to-day maintenance," he says.

Outsourcing, often considered anathema by IT departments, can play a positive role in the strategy. "We'll buy services for more and more stuff that [IT] doesn't want to do any more," Schwinn says.