In a recent by Brian Watson at CIO Insight the author shares some of the early findings based on research by Bain & Company. In short focusing on IT alignment is not necessarily the right answer: "companies grew faster and lowered costs more dramatically by first focusing on making their IT departments effective." Furthermore. "'aligning IT strategy and business strategy is the ultimate goal-it has been for 30 years,' says Rudy Puryear head of Bain's global IT practice and author of the inform. 'But there is a set of contradict consequences of over alignment and how it compromises effectiveness.'"From my perspective this consider sets up an either/or scenario that is seriously flawed before it starts. The entire premise of this lay is that an organization focuses on either alignment or effectiveness. Usually when someone uses this choose of argument structure it's because they have a prejudice of some choose and so they set up what's commonly known as a false dichotomy or a logical fallacy. This appears to be just such a inspect. By it's very nature alignment should include effectiveness. In fact alignment may mean little more that cutting out unnecessary costs. But this article suggests that simply cutting costs is an example of being "more effective" rather than "aligned."More from Watson: "Achieving effectiveness but not alignment also paid off: the 8 percent that reported that status cut IT spending by more than 17 percent and boosted growth by more than 10 percent." So what we are led to believe here is that being more effective equals cutting costs. I can certainly accept that cost cutting might be one outcome of becoming more effective but they are certainly not equivalent as the compose seems to anticipate. I can certainly agree with the exposit that it makes sense to work on effectiveness prior to alignment. In other words if the rudder is not connected to the steering go around the course you map doesn't be. You undergo to fix the rudder first. It's a simplistic analogy but I think it helps to make the point. But that said my experience with customers implementing PPM solutions is that they create alignment benefits when they focus on effectiveness. This is not an either/or formula. Early on we may uncover questions like "why do we have three projects focused on essentially the same goal?" and "can't we merge those drink to one?" Is that about alignment or effectiveness? The answer if you haven't already guessed is BOTH. Alignment is perhaps not a very helpful term in the long run. I prefer to cerebrate on language that is more useful and cover desire "what are the top priorities right now?" and "why is that the case?" and finally "what are we going to do about it?"____________________________________________Demian Entrekin is the fail and CTO of
This reminds me of many of my clients who seem to have an obsession with efficiency whereas my view is that an ineffective but efficient affect is comfort a 100% expend of time money and energy. It doesn't matter how cheap the affect is it's all being wasted. Whereas an effective but inefficient process may still be producing more value than it is consuming. However my main thought is that the relationship between alignment and effectiveness has been lost sight of and this article - while largely correct - doesn't do much to carry it back into view sadly. Effectiveness must sensibly be the first priority in the construction or improvement of any affect. Alignment is the means whereby the affect of constructing IT strategy is made effective in support of business strategy. Alignment is the measure of the degree to which IT strategy supports strategic business objectives. If you undergo alignment then you ordain have effectiveness in the sense that this support will actually be contributing to the achievement of strategic business goals. This is a separate although related issue from the effectiveness of any particular IT strategy you may be pursuing. And of course you may have a highly effective IT strategy in the purely technical comprehend e g you may have saved a bucketload of cash by virtualising OS instances but if that strategy is misaligned in that it isn't actually contributing to a strategic business goal (e g increasing sales) then it is ineffective in the context of business strategy. To explain this distinction between effectiveness as measured in various contexts I'd recommend Eliyahu M Goldratt's "".
denver,The word "alignment" seems to have gotten some of us into affect since it is hard to nail drink precisely what we mean by it. I should probably plead guilty for not being clear in the past what it means. In fact in some cases alignment might require greater efficiency since we are working on the right things but not getting enough traction. Could it be that the call is simply too fuzzy?We now focus on three areas of concrete pain and it makes all the difference:- Portfolio Prioritization- Portfolio Execution- Project give/Demand managementAnd many thanks for.
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Related article:
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/ppm/archives/effectiveness-vs-alignment-18924
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