The “Soft” part of SharePoint - Part 6, Challenge the Business

This is a tricky one! I know the saying "the customer is always right" or "the customer is king". In IT the business is your customer, IT by itself is useless. IT is there to support the business to work as efficient as possible, but does this mean that the customer is indeed always right.......

I have seen many cases where IT puts the business before everything. They do pretty much everything to do what the business asks them to do, often without questions. Very often this resulted in projects turning into disasters:

• The business asks for more that they need
• They radically change their requirements when you just started the implementation

And of course, afterwards the business starts complaining that it took too long and the costs were too high.

Then what is causing these kind of issues. Two reasons behind these drama’s are:

1. The business doesn’t know what exactly they want.
• Result 1: They ask something else every day
• Result 2: They ask what they think they want
2. The business is asking for IT solutions instead of specifying the business need
• Result: They ask for a technical solution which is not fitting their business need

That is why IT should challenge everything the business is asking for: Do they have a clear picture what they want? Do they really want what they ask? Don't they mean something else and therefore ask the wrong question? Isn’t there an easier way to meet their business need?

This is not to question everything they do, but to get to know the true question behind the question. When all requirements are clear on all ends, projects can be executed easier and cheaper.