Do You Work in IT or BT?

It's a perennial complaint: IT doesn't understand the business side, and the business side doesn't understand the value of IT. The two camps exist under the same corporate umbrella, but there's a lack of connection and cooperation. So what to do?

Well, how about giving IT a new name?

A recent article on CIO.com reports on an executive report in which Forrester CIO George Colony makes a strong case for changing the name of IT to BT, for "Business Technology." Why? "At its core, I define BT as measuring your usage of technology with business metrics instead of technology metrics."

He goes on to say:

Changing the term to BT is also a powerful way for the chief technologist - CIO or CTO - to signal to line-of-business managers and executives and also to the presidents, COO, CEO, and the board of directors that 'We're not in the technology business anymore; we're in the real business - the company's business.' I believe by changing the name to BT, and changing its behavior to focus on the business of the business, the technology organization would transform its relationship with the business. I think it would begin to communicate in a different language (the language of business), the current lack of communication would dissipate, and we'd have a higher level of communication around the business problems and the business issues.

Does the switch of single word have the power to make such a sea change happen? Time will tell. Probably quite a bit of time, to be honest.

-- Don Willmott

Posted at 09:45AM Oct 16, 2009 in Blog  |  Comments[1]