What are the things in structure, process and language that lead to the rift between IT and “The Business”? In this session we will look at the causes and consequences of artificial boundaries between IT and business organizations, and what can be done about them.
In theory everyone in an enterprise is aligned toward selling products, delighting the customer, and helping employees evolve their talents. But in reality departments establish their own vision and goals that undermine the alignment, or worse, create actual hostility between IT and the lines of business they support.
Agile teams often focus on output: getting more and better, faster and cheaper. What would it be like if the boundaries between IT and business groups were dissolved and the focus became on collectively delivering real value: impact and business outcomes?
And here’s a question to get you thinking: why is the phrase “The Business” part of the problem?
About the speaker:
Bob Fischer is an organizational agility consultant with Eliassen Group. Previously he was a Vice President at Fidelity Investments, where he was responsible for the deployment of Agile to over 400 people. His activities included coaching at the team and program levels as well as working with functional groups not directly involved in Agile such as Finance, HR, and Process Ownership. The cultural change included getting agreement between the Business Unit President, CIO, CFO, and the head of Product Development on a common strategy for deploying Agile. Agile was cited as the key reason a large (over $10 million annual spend) project went from failure to success. Bob was also an organization-wide catalyst at Fidelity, helping to broaden the deployment of Agile across the larger organization.
As an organizational agility consultant, Bob works with organizations that have found agility to be essential to their ability to survive and thrive in a time of rapid change, technology upheaval, and intense competition. His systemic approach enables companies to look across their whole organization to envision, design, build and deliver high value products.
