@ Forrester’s IT Forum: The Business Technology Transformation: Cullen on Business Capabilities, not Projects

For the next few days, I’ll be at Forrester’s IT Forum in Las Vegas. The conference is centered on Forrester’s Business Technology agenda:

“…a time for some soul searching in IT, a time to learn from past lessons and create a better way. Forrester calls this new mandate business technology (BT), where every business activity is enabled by technology and every technology decision hinges on a business need.”

The goal of the conference is to enable a real-world transformation to Business Technology. 

Tom Pohlmann, Vice President, Forrester is setting the stage for the conference, describing the drivers and timing for organizations to move to Business Technology.  The time is now.

Pohlmann introduces the 5 Pillars for Business Technology Firms:

1. Create intelligent business processes
2. Connect people fluidly to drive innovation
3. Build capabilities, not projects
4. Deliver Services, not systems
5. Simplify always and everything

Alex Cullen, VP and Research Director of Enterprise Architecture Practice is the first keynote speaker.  He is going to elaborate on pillar #3 – Build Capabilities, not Projects.

Cullen opens talking about Business-IT Alignment.  He describes the problem of business-IT alignment as a “hardy perennial”.  Something we can’t kill.  Until now.  The way to fix the business-IT alignment issue is via a capability based approach.  Leading organizations, such as Pfizer, are closing the gap by focusing on business capabilities, rather than projects.

Capabilities describe your business.  Capabilities are all the stuff necessary to perform an act.  The stuff: processes, information, business functions, business goals, key metrics and key gaps.

There are 3 views of a capability map: enterprise view, individual capabilities and technology view. 

Cullen walked through an example for an insurer.  The enterprise view map had 3 sections” sales & servicing, product administration and business management.  Alex drilled into a customer service capability.  Showed the purpose of capability maps along the way. 

Why capability map?

1. Clarify what is important to the business
2. Focuses investment plans and project portfolios
3. Connect business processes, information and systems.  Forrester research shows that business process improvement projects are often divorced from data architecture and knowledge.  This is a huge risk.
4. Identify potential common services

In addition, Cullen points out that capability maps enhance other planning models, such as business strategy, business process, and IT Services. 

Cullen calls out Henry Mintzberg’s emergent strategy work. 

Game plan for closing alignment gap:

• start with your own business, not one off the shelf
• keep your capability maps simple
• bring into all conversations and management processes
• use to educate IT staff
• use it (capability map) to guide innovation

To follow the entire conference conversation on twitter, use hashtag #ITF10.  Follow me on twitter @bmichelson.