Forget Alignment, It's Time for BT

Just when you were trying to get used to the latest information technology management theory, another comes along to take its place.

You've heard of IT alignment, in which chief information officers and other IT managers try to sync up IT projects and their management processes with the organization's budgets, strategies and goals. But IT alignment has proven elusive for most CIOs because tight budgets don't allow for significant investments in new applications and the speed in which agencies (and companies) must respond to changing technologies and what must be done on a daily basis have made it increasingly difficult to align IT investments with business realities, reports Forrester Research Inc.

Now, what's needed, Forrester said a report released last week, is something called Business Technology Synchronization. What's BT Synchronization?

First, all units in an organization will be responsible for developing IT to meet the organization's strategic goals. ("Successful BT Synchronization will, ironically, depend entirely on the people managing both technology and business initiatives â€" from inside and beyond the walls of the traditional IT organization," according to the report.)

Second, "today’s vertically integrated IT organization that manages all of the technology for every user in the business will be obsolete as business users adopt technology directly ...," according to the report. "BT organizations must continuously tune a network of suppliers â€" including some that are engaged independently of the BT organization â€" to meet BT’s networked matrix of demand."

Third, the CIO's IT roles of overseeing existing operations and coming up with innovations to support strategic goals will be separated by "introducing a COO of technology to handle support to business units (as at FedEx), dividing work between process and information officers (as at GM), or using other delegation approaches that free up the BT executive to focus at the C-level," Forrester reports. All IT benefits and performance will be meticulously measured.

You heard it here first.