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Project RLT: Reaching "Level 3" Business-IT Capability
How to Move Up the Maturity and Value Curve
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Many well-managed IT organizations are poised for the next evolutionary leap: from a partner in process improvement, enterprise integration, and business performance to an active agent of innovation, development of economic communities, and business growth. Project RLT delineates the challenges and tactics for making that transformational leap.
Project RLT features the participation of some of BSG Concours' most experienced consultants and researchers, including Dr. Nick Vitalari, an expert in leadership decision making and corporate renewal; Vaughan Merlyn, an authority on business/IT strategy and management of organizational change; Roy Youngman, an expert on the design and implementation of IT initiatives and value realization; and Bob Morison, an authority on the organization, evolution and general management of IT. Please visit Vaughan Merlyn's blog on the topic.
Recent Re.sults® research has examined advanced IT work and management practices in a variety of areas, including services, sourcing, architecture, talent, governance, funding, and value realization. To describe the challenges faced by IT organizations, we regularly refer to a business-IT maturity model of how IT supply meets business demand, and how IT innovation creates business opportunity. The simplified version of the model has three levels of maturity:
- Level 1 - Business Efficiency - focusing on operational execution and cost control. IT provides technology services and application systems.
- Level 2 - Business Effectiveness - focusing on improvement of key business processes and enterprise integration. IT also provides business-oriented services and expertise.
- Level 3 - Business Transformation - focusing on technology-enabled business innovation and change. IT also provides a flexible platform for business growth.
As maturity rises, so does the integration of IT with the business and the business value created by IT. Many IT organizations today are solidly at Level 2, reaching for Level 3, and perhaps performing at Level 3 with respect to a few business processes. But they find the transition to Level 3 as a sustained state very challenging. It's unexplored territory. It takes far more than boosting performance as conventionally measured. The things that had to be done to get from Level 1 to Level 2 will not get you to Level 3. Getting to Level 2 is about bringing order to the chaos - simplifying IT infrastructure, centralizing control over IT spending and standards, establishing credibility for project results and service performance, and implementing strong process disciplines. Getting to Level 3 is more about living with complexity, fostering self-service, decentralizing control, empowering the network, and being market focused and business driven.
Reaching Level 3 is also about more than alignment of business and IT goals and resources. The traditional distinctions between "business" and "IT" largely disappear as perspectives, activities, and staff converge. Business and IT talent freely move across traditional technical and business boundaries and create new levels of collaboration, understanding, learning, and results. To reach Level 3, IT and the business must - together - have all the pieces in place, starting with an outside-in, customer-centric view of what constitutes success.
From our study of the experiences, attributes, and business roles of the most accomplished IT organizations, we can describe Level 3 - as the next destination for enterprises, not just their IT organizations. In this project, we focus on the prerequisites and transition steps for getting there. We invite the leadership of IT organizations committed to reaching the next level to work with us, share their experiences and challenges, and together build their transition roadmaps and tactics for reaching Level 3 and maximizing IT's contribution to the business.
Re.sults® Project RLT will enable participants to address issues such as:
- What are the defining characteristics of a Level 3 IT capability? How should we measure progress getting there?
- What are the business and IT prerequisites for reaching Level 3? How can we put any missing ones in place as quickly as possible?
- How can IT organizations put "platform thinking" into action to support and nurture enterprise business innovation and growth?
- How can we "play to our strengths" - leveraging IT's most advanced capabilities to reinforce and improve others?
- Where does Level 3 require a dramatic break from today's practices and attitudes? How do we make those breaks?
- What are the specific leadership, educational, relationship, operational and management challenges of reaching Level 3? How should we address each?
- How can we bring our vendors and other partners along and leverage and incorporate them in our Level 3 capability?
- What then? How should we as a Level 3 IT organization work with the business to become a next generation enterprise?
Project RLT begins on November 30, 2007 and concludes on March 28, 2008. It is possible to join the project in progress. Project RLT participation is included in all Concours programs for CIOs.
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