Demand-driven IT organizations are free to perform whatever projects their client organizations may request, as long as those clients have the budget to pay for them. If yours is a demand-driven IT organization, count this among your professional blessings.
The Supply-Constrained IT Organization’s Dilemma
While supply-constrained IT organizations may also re-charge their clients, they are also constrained by a budget cap. It is not unusual for a company to dictate that their total IT expenditure not exceed a certain amount, perhaps some percent of sales. If the sum of the project requests made of IT exceeds this cap, which it always does, and even if the client organizations requesting those projects have the budget to accept the re-charges, IT will still have to turn work away so as not to exceed the company-wide cap.
Making matters worse, during times of heightened cost consciousness supply-constrained IT organizations face a lose/lose problem. The act of reducing client organizations' budgets tends to stimulate their demand for IT services as they turn to technology to get more done for less. As a result, IT's supply vs. demand gap is exasperated because IT's ability to supply is further constrained by the very same budget conditions that are simultaneously stimulating an increase in their demand.
It is a behavioral fact of business life that every organization will do whatever it has to do to meet its targets. Unfortunately for supply-constrained IT organizations, because demand usually exceeds supply, meeting their targets usually means turning away work from their client organizations. Consequently, supply-constrained IT organizations are often viewed as: difficult to work with, disconnected from the business, elitist, a necessary evil, and in other derogatory terms. In other words, they are viewed as an internal "vendor of force," rather than a "vendor of preference."
Just as anyone does when a vendor becomes too hard to work with, those client organizations quit working with their internal IT organization and turn elsewhere—especially if the client believes their IT need is critical to meeting their targets. Sometimes the client will try the "do-it-yourself" route, but more often they turn to an external vendor. Sometimes they do so overtly; more often they do so covertly—under the radar. In either case, the internal IT organization becomes even more disconnected from the business and loses relevance—and, as we all know too well, irrelevant organizations find themselves outsourced or eliminated outright.
Windward’s Solution Approach
IT's organizational power begins with their ability to do three fundamental things. If they’re not able to do this basic blocking and tackling, then they won’t be trusted to join in the more strategically important, the sexier, and the more fun projects. These three fundamentals are:
- Deliver basic services with high reliability (e.g., when a client picks up their phone, they expect dial tone—there can be no ifs, ands, or buts, about it; when a client puts fingers to keyboard they expect response time at least as good as what they experience at home from their $50/month ISP and cable TV provider; etc.).
- Align IT priorities and budgets with those of its clients. ?
- Do what it says it will do.
Aligning your IT priorities and budgets with those of your clients, and executing against those plans so you do what you say you’re going to do, are in our sweet spot.
Windward Leadership helps IT organizations manage their supply and demand problem in a way that builds alignment with their company's strategy, and partnership with their organizational clients. It is a program we simply call, “IT Alignment.”
IT Alignment begins with an annual operational planning process that will drive alignment among your resources (your supply) and your client’s priorities (your demand). We then move to processes for managing execution against that operational plan. The result is an IT operational plan that is created and executed in ways that are:
- Congruent with the operational needs and strategic plans of the business (i.e., aligned). ?
- Do-able (i.e., commitments you can honor).
- Resilient (i.e., highly reliable while also adaptive to change).
- Repeatable and predictable (i.e., without mystery). ?
- Generally regarded as "fair" by all concerned.
Engagement Structure
An IT Alignment engagement begins with an all day workshop, at the location of your choice, in which we present Windward's principles, concepts, processes, and tools for operational planning and execution. Multiple workshops may be required depending on the number and location of the teams to be trained. Consequently, the fee for this workshop will vary accordingly.
Following the workshop we will work together to determine the additional consulting services you may desire to help you build organizational self-sufficiency with these processes.
