Technology Business Value Déjà vu

Posted by: Mike Rollings

The Federal Computer Week article “SOA experts: Learn to speak business” by Michael Hardy states “for service-oriented architecture to succeed, information technology professionals must understand the business needs of their agencies’ organizations and learn to talk about the benefits of SOA in business terms”. I would contend that for ANY architecture effort to succeed, information technology professionals must understand the business needs and be able to express the benefits in business terms.

The lack of a strong connection to the business has always inhibited technology investment, so has the lack of business participation, demonstrable commitment of sponsors, and the lack of commitment of stakeholders to the result. In my March 10th EAP blog post “Tear down that wall”, I discuss that a concerted effort is required from enterprise architecture and other IT disciplines to improve the discussion of IT value.  To achieve the potential of SOA's long-term benefits, a focus on the business is critical.

In the April 3rd APS blog post “Spanning the layers”, Chris Haddad (Vice President and Service Director for Application Platform Strategies) asks “does thinking about business and IT alignment trigger brain buffer overflow”? He states that during the Burton Group Institute Service Oriented Architecture Workshop sessions last week, the audience was quiet when the discussion focused on how to measure business value, but discussions about technology topics were more animated. This seems to be a recurring theme associated with enterprise architecture and the justification of IT investments.

IT professionals continue to focus on the design and engineering aspects of technology adoption and seem to forget that technology is only relevant in relation to the business value it provides.

Comments

[Scott Quick]

Mike,

great post and right on-point.

My firm, The Catalyst Group, is focused almost entirely on this topic. Read this post when you have a chance:

http://www.scottquick.com/ignite/why-use-rss-in-the-enterprise.html

Welcome your insights and comments.
Scott Quick, Principal
The Catalyst Group
www.scottquick.com