Business Driven: The Pending Revolution in IT.

Do you have business responsibilities in your company? Surprise! There’s a party in your honor, and you weren’t invited. If the company you work for has a certain scale, chances are that millions of euros are being spent on technology and software right now to “support the business.” And yet, you (the business) are not involved.

We're not just talking about digital products and specific, localized applications. We're talking about major architectural modernizations, core system overhauls, legacy decommissioning, and full ERP renewals,the echoes of a never-ending digital transformation.

Software consulting doesn’t seem to enjoy the highest prestige. We’re not usually the star professors in postgraduate courses, nor do we make the covers of business magazines. But we do know better than most where and how money is being invested in digital transformation.

One thing I've seen repeatedly over 13 years in this industry is the huge disconnect between "the business" and "technology", and I see no signs of change. The real issue is that this negatively impacts results, causing a significant portion of these investments to go to waste.

The disconnect between IT and business

The leaders of major IT projects often minimize business involvement for several reasons:

• Own budget: They prefer to allocate their budget to their own challenges.
• Investment vs. expense perspective: For IT, technology is an investment. For the business, it's an expense—at best, a necessary means to an end.
• Fear of unrealistic expectations: IT teams often dread what they sarcastically call “the Christmas wish list,” a set of unattainable demands from the business side.
• Different internal challenges: IT has priorities like “shutting down the AS400” or “migrating services to the cloud,” which don’t always align directly with business goals.
• Business knowledge: IT assumes it already knows everything necessary about the business and believes it is already working in its best interest.

On the other hand, the business perceives its IT department as:

• Expensive: Everything seems overpriced.
• Slow: IT projects take too long to implement.
• A bottleneck: The business feels “trapped” by internal IT, whereas with external vendors, they feel they have more leverage.
• Lacking empathy: IT teams are seen as indifferent to the competitive pressure and urgency that the business faces.
• Own budget: Just like IT, the business prefers to invest its budget as it sees fit.

The business doesn't know how to explain itself or break free from this cycle

The problem with the business side is that everyone thinks they know enough. If it were a rock band, technology would be the lead guitarist, while the business would be an incredible frontman—charismatic and essential—but unable to play any instrument. The guitarist can always sing, but the frontman can’t play the guitar, no matter how unique and indispensable they are in a less practical sense.

The business side struggles to articulate its motivations and establish itself as indispensable, even though it absolutely is.

The study of knowledge has explored this issue and helps explain why this phenomenon occurs, especially when dealing with contextual, conceptual, or systemic knowledge. Business knowledge falls within what Michael Polanyi described in the 1960s as "tacit knowledge," encapsulated in the phrase "We know more than we can tell." This type of knowledge is highly individual, subjective, contextual, and conceptual, as opposed to the "explicit knowledge" of technology, which is far more objective, transferable, and formalizable.

Unlike this "scattered" knowledge, technology has the added advantage of being operational today, right now, whereas business—especially new business—is often a promise of future value. That’s a tough sell in an era driven by immediacy and decontextualized metrics.

But the biggest challenge is the inability to clearly explain all the different facets of the word "business."

Difference between business requirements, business objectives, and business rules

What each person envisions when they hear the word "business" is highly personal, and it's often used as shorthand for very different concepts:

• Business requirements: These are the list of specifications and needs that the software must meet to be considered satisfactory. They include two types of requirements: functional (what the software must do) and non-functional (performance, security, usability, compatibility, legal compliance, maintainability, etc.).
• Business objectives: These define the direction of a company or business unit in the medium and long term. They contain specific and measurable goals (not just aspirations) that the organization aims to achieve within a set timeframe, such as expanding into a specific market or increasing market share in a particular segment. These objectives ensure that all company efforts are aligned and directed toward achieving the desired results.
• Business rules: These are the policies, guidelines, processes, procedures, conditions, and constraints that dictate how an organization should operate. While optimizing and refining them can enhance a company’s competitiveness, their primary purpose is more descriptive than strategic. They are necessary but don’t necessarily provide a competitive edge in the market.

To put things in order: software must address business requirements, which ideally serve business objectives, while operating within a framework of business rules, all with the goal of improving business results. It might sound like a tongue twister, but understanding this distinction is crucial.

This is important because when people say, "software serves the business," it's a true but incomplete statement. Software always operates based on business rules—there's no other way. A company's ERP includes modules for billing, pricing, CRM, master data management, and even a recommendation engine for cross-selling. But that doesn't necessarily mean it serves the new business requirements that arise from competitive market pressures.

And that’s the key: organizations often fail to differentiate between their performance in the present market and their potential in the future market.

Business Driven: A win-win for large-scale modernizations

Our Business Driven approach stems from this understanding of the problem and proposes a method designed to ensure that modernization directly impacts business outcomes. The goal is to elevate IT investments by bringing to the surface these submerged cathedrals of value.

In these processes, it is crucial to clarify the level of ambition and expected business impact early on, aligning with key stakeholders at the project's outset. While this vision doesn’t need to be set in stone, it must be unambiguous and as stable as possible.

If this level of vision is achieved, it presents a challenge in terms of innovation and strategy—requiring a different approach, different skill sets, and a new way of managing expectations. However, the return is undoubtedly worth it due to the benefits it brings:

• For the business, it enables influence over the roadmap, leading to shared responsibility and better financial management.
• For IT, it provides clear direction for large investments, ensuring modernization efforts focus on business returns rather than simply upgrading assets. Often, the lack of direction and specificity causes modernization projects to fail.
• It helps IT teams manage change more effectively. Better communication fosters discussion, debate, and empathy in decision-making.
• Improved collaboration with the business significantly reduces or eliminates shadow IT, preventing unauthorized software from being procured outside of IT oversight.
• It enables IT to demonstrate the value of its achievements, creating a clear traceability between costly new assets and their business impact.

When both sides collaborate, the result is far greater than the sum of its parts. So, what are we waiting for to break down the wall?

There’s a well-known reflection in the software world, succinctly put by Elon Musk, that we should apply to become truly business driven:
"The biggest mistake a smart engineer can make is optimizing a component that shouldn’t exist in the first place."