Building Collaborative IT and Business Partnerships: The Critical Success Factor for BI Initiatives
(Originally published by TDWI) By Maureen Clarry
(This article is available for download, as a PDF document.)
Comment from a CFO: “BI projects are always late, over budget, and hard to track and understand…if only the IT department would…”
Comment from a CIO: “My business customer is a very vocal critic of the IT team, but won’t invest five minutes trying to make it better…if only the business would…”
Perhaps you’ve heard similar comments before: the verbal volley of blame, accusations, cynical barbs, and power struggles that are an all-too-common by-product of business intelligence initiatives. Though there are companies with solid relationships between these departments, a recent survey indicates that the average business perception of IT’s value is an unimpressive 6.05 on a scale of one to 10. The biggest complaints? IT costs too much, takes too long, doesn’t line up with the business strategy, and is a commodity.
In many cases, these are misperceptions based on a lack of understanding. Whether valid or not, the negative view has consequences for the entire organization and the people involved. The finger-pointing continues and organizations are locked in a cycle of “let’s change…you go first.”
One word that dominates these discussions is “partnership,” or, more typically, the lack thereof. Go to any BI conference or seminar and you’ll surely hear conversations revolving around this seemingly simple concept. Yet, many organizations still endure significant difficulty in building lasting partnerships. Why?
To understand what’s happening, let’s begin with a definition of partnership:
A relationship in which we are jointly committed to the success of whatever process we are in.
In the context of business intelligence, the question becomes: is the relationship between business and IT one that is jointly committed to the success of the business intelligence initiative? What is required from the business to achieve success? What is required from the IT department to achieve success? And what do both jointly see as the true measure of their common success?
Based on my 35 years of research into human systems, there are patterns that contribute to this joint commitment (or its lack). In fact, there are predictable conditions and predictable responses based on the roles in the organization. It’s like a generic data model of the various organizational levels and roles. Visualize a typical organization, which has “tops” with overall responsibility, “bottoms” that do the direct work of the organization, “middles” that manage the workers, and “providers” that deliver services to “customers,” who are relying upon the organization to give them what they need to do their job.
Our TDWI class, Bringing Business & IT Together, uses this framework so people can experience these patterns and see clearly how their roles and responses impact partnership in the organization. The exercise divides the class into four groups: senior management; middle management; providers responsible for delivering projects; and customers. We then issue project instructions and everyone starts working on a variety of faux projects.
Interestingly, in the hundreds of times this exercise has been conducted, the patterns of relationship are repeated and predictable. Although we typically analyze all the roles and their behaviors, for the purposes of this article, let’s focus on the default behaviors of customers and providers.
Typically, customers (the business) default to holding the providers (IT department)-responsible for not delivering what they want when they want it. Providers default to trying to please the customers and doing as much as possible on their own-frequently by forging ahead and over committing.
These predictable conditions and responses are so common that they’ve become ingrained in most corporate professionals. Most people don’t even realize that they’re doing this. The lack of awareness stems from the fact that these responses are not choices or decisions; they are simply reactions. As each group reacts to the reactions of the other group, the possibility for partnership fades. But once these patterns of behavior are recognized, the path to productive partnership becomes much clearer.
Here are some high-level guidelines and strategies to support customers and providers in building a productive partnership. Granted, these are not rocket science. However, you might be surprised at how frequently we see these fundamentals ignored.
Providers: Be a provider that involves the customer in a meaningful way. Specifically:
Involve your customers early. Don’t wait until it’s a crisis or you’re at the completion of the project. Are your customers involved in your project kickoff? They should be.
Explain the BI process and objectives. Limit the tech talk and explain the key processes and the importance of the customer in the process. Be open to their suggestions on how the process could be improved.
Negotiate expectations. Time and time again, in the name of “customer service,” we see providers overcommit based on customer expectations. Negotiate what makes sense. You’re better off to say no than to over-commit and under-deliver.
Be clear about what you need; create specific roles and responsibilities. We have reviewed multiple projects that have no meaningful role for the customer. We have seen many project plans with no tasks assigned to the customer. If they are “not on the hook” for anything, there is no “skin in the game” and you are therefore limiting their contribution. Yes, they’ll say they don’t have time. But you don’t have time not to involve them.
It is typically imprudent to say “no,” so say: “yes, if… .” YES, we can do that IF we have more resources. YES, we can do that IF you dedicate time within the next week.
Customers: Be a customer who gets in the middle of delivery processes and helps them work. Specifically:
Find out how “it” works. “It” could be the requirements definition process, change control process, project management process… whatever is critical to the success of the initiative. Once you understand how “it” works, you can figure out how to make it work better for you (and the initiative).
Set clear and reasonable demands and standards. It’s not enough to dump a long list of requirements on the IT team. Articulate and negotiate clear and reasonable expectations that you jointly agree to. All too often, as the customer, we brandish our entitlement, dump on the provider, and walk away. Consider objectively whether it’s realistically possible to jointly commit to what you’re requesting.
Get into the process early as a partner, not late as a judge. When do you speak up? At the beginning of a project or at the end? Do you participate as a partner or place blame as a judge after the fact?
Stay close to the team. There is no substitute for communicating directly with the people doing the work. This is not to say you should circumvent the project management processes that are in place, but push for direct communication.
Notice that these strategies can be employed at any point in the project. So even if you are well into your data warehouse initiative, negotiating these factors would be a valuable use of time. In a TDWI World Conference keynote address titled “BI and Business/IT Relationships,” Dave Wells said, “You can’t change others; you can only change yourself.” The finger-pointing can stop and partnership can thrive if the predictable cycle becomes one of “let’s change…I’ll go first.”
Maureen Clarry is the CEO of CONNECT: The Knowledge Network, a consulting firm that specializes in staffing and developing IT organizations to achieve their strategic potential in business. CONNECT was recognized as the 2000 South Metro Denver Small Business of the Year, the Top 25 Women Owned and Top 150 Privately Owned Businesses in Colorado. Maureen participates on the Data Warehousing Advisory Board for the University of Denver and has been on the faculty of TDWI since 1998. She can be reached at mclarry@connectknowledge.com.