Bridging the gap between business and IT- the key element for launching innovation.

In big organizations, especially those that aspire towards delivering continued excellence, major ambitious projects require successful coordination between multiple teams and stakeholders. Delivery of these projects is directly proportional to how each team and contributors understand the requirements. However often there is a disconnect between two of a business’s most vital teams: product and technology. In a survey conducted by PWC, 46% of executives agree that business and technology do not have a common understanding of the corporate strategy.

Indisputably, bringing these teams together is the defining ingredient in the success of launching any innovative product. But how do we create this cohesion?

As a project manager within the tech industry, I have had first-hand experience in overcoming these challenges. This article, will highlight some of the most common aspects experienced while attempting to bridge the gap between the sponsor: business/product teams and the executor: IT teams

Broadly classifying there are 3 major pillars on which we can construct this cohesion between product and tech:

1. Improving Communications
2. Cultivating Tech Empathy
3. Managing Expectations

Today we will dive deeper into the role of communication in bringing together business and IT. As Nat Turner would say, “Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.”

A project is considered successful only when the full scope is delivered across three axes: Cost, Quality, and Time. Surprisingly, if a project fails on any of these axes, it is not because of “external uncontrollable factors” but rather due to communication-related problems. In fact, according to the Project Management Institute; for every US$1 billion invested in a project, 56% is at risk due to ineffective communication. (Source: PMI Pulse report)

Communication however is a broad term in itself. In the context of tech projects, it can encompass many aspects such as vision alignment, cooperation between teams, requirement understanding, translating business goals into technical deliverables, and efficient change management.

Let’s demystify these communication inefficiencies and look at some ways with which we can resolve them:

Breaking silos

Often product and tech teams work in silos, neither involved in each other’s work and focused on individual sets of deliverables.

Tech has no interest in learning what user journey is or looking at A/B testing results. Similarly, product teams do not want to understand what are sequence diagrams nor have any interest in reading API contracts for a new feature. This creates a lack of empathy on both sides. Tech teams do not understand why product teams are making a seemingly simple feature more complicated and product teams do not understand why two functionally similar features have very different delivery timelines.

Hence breaking these silos is important for harmony between the two teams. One easy way to do this is by including representatives from tech teams in product discussions and vice versa. This would create awareness on each side and develop affinity within the teams. However, it is to be practiced with caution, as interaction levels should stay within the spectrum of efficiency. Lack of communication cannot be compensated by over-communication.

Who’s your bridge?

Another way to close this gap is by having a mediator, someone that understands the language of these two worlds and can easily enter and exit them. A messenger of both sides, a bridge that connects product and technology, a shapeshifter.

There must be one person in the team that not only understands the end-to-end flow (from UI/UX to backend requirements) but also takes ownership of ensuring its implementation. In organizations that follow SAFe agile framework, this role is played by Product Managers. In other set-ups, it is the project managers that take this ownership. Name is irrelevant but ensuring the role exists is fundamental.

Avoiding vision voids

For building a successful digital product, sharing the vision is only the first step towards achieving alignment.

Often business teams give a product presentation with an expectation that the rest of the teams have understood the vision and are ready to start delivering. However in reality, for achieving true alignment there needs to be a healthy discussion around the product vision and sufficient brainstorming sessions to ensure that the needs are correctly understood and translated. There are many ways to achieve vision coherence amongst large teams, some of them are:

1. Clear and detailed documentation- Documentation describing not just the functional scope with product mock-ups but also the technical deliverables. Product teams should ensure to include all the relevant information and specific business rules related to a feature delivery as it helps tech teams to plan the different possible technical flows. Tech teams should ensure to create a supporting technical document that meets all the functional requirements to avoid misalignment between the proposed solution and the delivered solution.
2. Creating space for raising questions- allowing each team member to reflect on the product vision and ask relevant questions. A strong analysis phase to discuss the different aspects of project delivery is a good medium to create that space. It is the responsibility of Tech teams to ask all the relevant questions and identify various dependencies.
3. Validation and checkpoints- make sure that all the relevant stakeholders are signing the scope. Client sign-off for functional requirement, architect teams sign off for the sequence diagrams and overall architecture of the project, tech team’s commitment on the expected deliveries. Before rushing into developments, it’s important to have these checkpoints put in place to ensure each team understands their scope and is aligned on the deliverables.

To conclude, we have established that communication is an important factor in bringing together business and IT for successfully launching innovative products in the market. Often improving communication is intuitive and getting a good grasp on it will help you overcome some easily avoidable repetitive obstacles. Remember to break silos, have at least one person on board that understands the end-to-end flow. Last but not the least, recognize the difference between sharing a vision vs aligning on one.

In the next article, we will go more into details over the other crucial factors for bridging the gap between business and IT, namely: Cultivating Tech Empathy and Managing Expectations. Few more milestones before we finish this journey of achieving product & tech cohesion.