By Alexandre Rodrigues, CEng. Ph.D. Prof. PMP

Business-IT alignment is often approached as a discrete goal to be achieved in a specific moment in time, as opposed to a continuous organizational process. This discrete one-off perspective creates the illusion that, if properly managed, an alignment initiative will lead to the desired final state of having the IT system fully aligned with the business needs.

These initiatives are typically implemented through major projects, which, more often than not, fail to deliver and meet the expectations (despite being accepted as mandatory). As the business environment is in constant change and as technology evolves, this alignment process is also inevitably continuous.

As many organizations recognize this reality, they often fall into a situation of painfully rescoping their large "ongoing" alignment projects or recurrently canceling current projects and starting new ones. In this scenario, the need to continuously "realign" IT to the changing business is perceived as a threat to business performance and competitive advantage; continuous change is not effectively capitalized over time, and opportunities are not explored.

I would correlate this problem with the degree of organizational maturity in managing change through projects. There is no doubt that the alignment process takes place in the context of projects and project management: business projects, process improvement, and IT projects are all part of continuous realignment. The difficulty in achieving effective benefits" realization throughout the alignment process stems from the absence of one of the three fundamental disciplines of change management: program management.

The global financial marketplace has recently become quite volatile, as fears of an American recession affect economies all over the world.  In addition, the Dow Jones Industrial Average currently hovers at around 12,400, while it was at around 14,000 in October 2007.  A drop of 11% in just four months is cause for concern for many people.

At times like this, executives typically search for ways to cut costs, which can be a sticky business.  And yet, what if you could know where your company is profitable and where it's not, and then figure out a way to do more of the profitable work?  In other words, what if you got rid of unprofitable customers instead of loyal, productive employees?

The truth is, many companies that slash costs in response to an economic recession find it difficult to achieve top-line growth when the recession ends.  This is not hard to believe, considering the fact that their best workers are gone and their long term projects were cancelled.  A company cannot grow on short term plans alone.  Overzealous cutting of people and projects can, however, be avoided, or at the very least, they can be performed with more intelligent precision.  All that are required to handle such problems the right way are per-customer per-project profitability metrics.

Understanding costs is the first step to understanding profitability. Most companies know their profitability company-wide, but few of them know it on a per-product or per-customer basis.  Such precision of understanding is necessary in order to develop and implement the right growth strategy.

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