It's Time for IT to Give Up on Alignment
posted by John Spacey, December 02, 2012There are few verbs in the English language as sleepy as "align". Nevertheless, it's a popular word amongst IT professionals:
Enterprise architects speak of aligning architecture and IT spending to business strategy and goals.
Project managers speak of aligning projects with stakeholder business objectives.
CIOs speak of aligning IT services to business strategy and goals.
There's got to be a better verb.
IT Marketing
In recent years, the marketing of IT has skyrocketed as internal IT departments face more competition from outsourcing firms.CIOs, IT directors and managers view their business counterparts as customers (as opposed to partners) .
IT marketing is now an essential capability for IT teams. Selling IT isn't optional.
When is the last time you heard the word align in advertising? Would you stay at a 5-star hotel that offered to align itself to your leisure goals and objectives?
Better Verbs
IT is a high value service. Marketing materials and communications should make use of high impact language. Think of advertising for other high value services such as 5-star hotels.Here's a list of 140 perfectly good verbs (yes, unfortunately align is also on the list).
Instead of aligning IT to business goals. Why don't we accelerate business execution and minimize costs? Align sounds like something you'd do to a tire.
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