IT u0026amp; Digital: Double or Quit option
Oct 3, 2014
Working on large transformation operation for a client in the Banking sector, I recently had the opportunity to think about how to build an innovation stream within the project. This operation was fully oriented on IT infrastructure and so far away from the business. The main challenge for this customer was to push innovation for IT in order to improve the IS infrastructure, and moreover to be able to, at the end, propose ideas directly to the business.
Preparing a dedicated session with Pierre Hessler on this topic, I would like to emphasize two very relevant points that Pierre stressed during the session.
Point 1: Digital changes the position of IT. The drawing below tries to explain this evolution:
As we can see, the position of IT is really very challenging in the new world and a kind of Schizophrenic role is rising up, i.e. be upstream in order to provide the organization with all technology benefits and be downstream to be able to implement the technologies in a very short duration due to the time to market constraint. Pierre Hessler called this new challenge “Double or Quit” due to other internal and parallel competitors working on Digital (Chief Digital Officer, Chief Data Officer, etc.)
Point 2: Maslow Pyramid Analogy
This second point could be linked to the first one showing the different stages that an IT department has to pass in order to become the Business Partner. This analogy has been built by the CIO of a large automotive company and has been reused and adapted for our client. The table below indicates the way that the Maslow pyramid could be crafted for an IT department:
This model could be applied and used to measure the improvement of an organization. I was really impressed by the way to simply and clearly formalize the most important challenge for IT. Does that make sense? Feel free to engage!