In 2016, we decided to assess the role of IT Business Partners in UK companies in the hope of finding out how effective they rate themselves. Organisational effectiveness is achieved when departments work together towards the same aim, sharing knowledge and resources to reach business goals.
The role of the IT Business Partner is to maximise the value that these departments can deliver through the use of technology. Our survey set out to find out whether IT Business Partners consider themselves, their business stakeholders and IT functions effective in realising value.
The Findings
We use a three tier system to measure the overall organisation Partnership Maturity, and overall across all survey respondents the result was “Service Partner”, the middle tier. The survey also found that IT Business Partners rate themselves weakest in the domain of Value Management.
We believe that, as the core functions of the IT Business Partner role, the practice of Value Management is essential for the long term success and credibility of the IT organisation. IT Business Partners have a fundamental role in making Value Management happen.
Competent Project Management and Service Delivery Management gives IT Business Partners the opportunity to practice at more strategic levels of the organisation and align technology with the business. Getting an IT Business Partner to ‘Service Partner’ status means demonstrating capability in both service delivery and in project management, two capabilities that are well defined in terms of framework and management tools.
To achieve ‘Strategic Partner’ status however, the top tier, an IT Business Partner needs to demonstrate that their capabilities and competencies encompass understanding the business as a whole and not just in the IT domain. The challenge to IT Business Partners is to develop and demonstrate these capabilities either themselves or leveraging other team members such as in Portfolio Management and Enterprise Architecture.
A copy of the survey results and insights can be accessed by entering your email at……
Over the next few weeks, we will be discussing the findings of our IT Business Partner survey in more depth, talking about the finer points of business maturity, strategic alignment, and organisational stress. We will talk about how the current skills of IT Business Partners align with the ethos of businesses, and how well these skills are being used to drive companies forward.
Look out for our upcoming blog posts on
- IT Capability
- Business Maturity
- IT Business Partner Competency
- Strategic Alignment and Organisational Stress
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