No, those ain't typo's in that headline – I MEAN “IT,” as in “information technology,” and not just a generic “it.” As you may have read here previously, I believe one of the first basic principles those pursuing BPM and BI excellence must address is finding and fixing what's broken. Once that's done, the very next basic set issues to address should answer the musical question, “How well is IT supporting the business?”
An immediately obvious follow-up question reminds me of a joke. What's the world's greatest invention? The Thermos(r) bottle. Why? Because it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. Why does that make it the world's greatest invention? How does it know? (Insert pained groans here. I'll wait. Enjoy. Now, back to work.)
That is to say, if you're going to figure out how well or poorly IT is supporting the business, how would you do so? Well, the only reliable way I know is to assess how people are using IT to do their work today, and how well those efforts are working.
This is easy to say, but like much about BPM, BI, and business-driven IT, tricky and challenging on many levels to do. Basically, it requires processes and solutions that help business and IT decision-makers to answer those questions many of us were told in our youth that every good news story should answer – who, what, when, where, why, and how. In this context, that means knowing who's using what IT-enabled resources, as well as when, where, why, and how those users are using those resources. Journalism 101, applied to the business IT infrastructure. On demand. Everywhere. No pressure.
This is a big goal. However, every step toward it can help you know valuable information about how well your business IT investments are actually contributing to business success – or how poorly. And while you're building, documenting, managing, and refining processes aimed at this goal, vendors are toiling mightily at delivering solutions that can help. More about both processes and tools for capturing and leveraging real-life workflows to come!
Michael Dortch has been an analyst, 'information entrepreneur,' speaker, and writer about IT and 'the real world" for the past 30 years. After almost 10 years at the Robert Frances Group (RFG), Michael begins a new position with Aberdeen Group in September.
Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.
