SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION
What is the discussion about (overview of group discussion)?
Our discussion focused on the alignment of IT priorities to business objectives.
What are the critical areas discussed and why it was imperative to the group?
The discussion covered business objectives that are easily aligned to business outcomes: operating costs, revenue growth, as well as how to ensure that security, compliance, complexity, and technical debt are also recognized as important business objectives for effective operations. There were participants in the room from a range of industries (banking, financial services, and biopharma) representing small startups and very large multinational companies. Building alignment on business objectives was of interest to participants who are starting new scope of responsibilities, ensuring sustainable and appropriately resourced goals, agreeing on performance metrics, and managing effectively business priorities and resource trade-offs.
What are a few takeaways from the discussion?
- Relationships and discussions that build alignment and shared understanding within the executive team are essential to the success of technology investments and prioritizing outcomes.
- IT leaders should elevate the conversation about technology to a business level and discuss the financial, business process, and operational benefits of technology.
- IT Governance, Roadmaps, Policy, and Service Catalogs are all useful tools in building an understanding of technology investments, priorities, and requirements (security, compliance, architecture, and technical debt).
Do you have any recommendations to share?
- There was full agreement in the room that IT investments should always start from business objectives, there is always more demand than a finite budget can support, and trade-offs require open discussion in executive teams about business value and impact.
- IT requirements such as technical debt, cybersecurity, and architecture need to be made accessible with translation to business impact and value
- Policy should strive to be in the context of “why?” and just-in-time accessible.
Please add comments or reflections here.
Thanks to the participants for their contributions and engagement, it was a valuable discussion and a small enough group to dig deeper in areas that were interesting or challenging for individual participants.