CA Technologies Interactive IT Executive Forum to pull a panel of experts together to help attendees understand how to use cloud computing, agile development and social media to integrate IT and the business.
IT industry experts and practitioners will come together this week to discuss if and how the nirvana of IT-business alignment can be made possible, potentially with the help of popular technologies such as cloud computing, agile development and social media.
Dipping your toes into the ocean of IT governance, Part 1
Dipping your toes into the ocean of IT governance, Part 2
Everyone working in IT knows the promise of IT-business alignment – IT projects prioritized based on business demand, supporting the business needs, to start – but most haven’t realized even the initial benefits of a true partnership between the two components because that type of evolution is just plain difficult for many to achieve. But the clock is ticking on such efforts within companies as it becomes more and more clear that technology drives the business and business leaders won’t be passive in technology decisions. For instance, the advent of cloud computing proves that companies can choose to get their IT from external sources if the internal providers can’t meet the business’ needs adequately or efficiently.
“IT can no longer say to the business, ‘It’s technical; you won’t understand it.’ There is a level of sophistication that the business now has and it’s time for IT to raise to the same level on the business side of the house,” says Steve Romero, vice president and IT Governance Evangelist at CA Technologies, who will be moderating a panel during the vendor’s IT Interactive Executive Forum, which will be broadcast Thursday from Pittsburgh to some 30 cities nationwide.
Romero will be joined by Peter Weill, Chairman for the Center for Information Systems at the MIT Sloan School and Co-Author of “IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain.” Daniel Neiconi, Director of Development Support Services in the Office of the CTO at McKesson Corp., will also sit on the panel with Bryan Funkhouser, Principal of Project Portfolio Management at Deloitte Consulting LLP. Brian Bell, General Manager of the Service Portfolio Management Customer Solution Unit at CA Technologies will round out the panel.
According to Romero, the group will be able to touch on some key points IT leaders are dealing with today and provide tips to the expected 500 attendees about how to evolve their IT organization to one that can be both agile and innovative. Yet he adds that success lies in both the IT organization and business becoming agile and innovation. As long as the two entities are considered separate, the much sought-after promises of IT-business alignment – or true integration as some have said more recently – will remain elusive.
“There are four balls IT has to be juggling in making both IT and the business more agile and innovative, and I hope attendees of this event will have more insight into how those four balls can be juggled and what they have to do to achieve each of the goals,” Romero explains. “IT governance will close the gap between IT and the business. At first, it blurs the distinction between the two and then it obliterates it until at last IT and the business become one.”
Where does your IT organization stand when it comes to IT-business alignment? How do you expect to become more agile or innovative? Do you have an IT governance plan in place? Please leave a comment here or let me know your thoughts directly via e-mail at Denise.Dubie@ca.com.
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