Do you believe that IT drives business or that business drives IT?

Answer 1

It is clearly a question of both.

In the business sector, back in the beginning, IT was created as a tool to reduce the administrative burden on companies and thereby drive forward business efficiency. As in the education sector (where I work), where one can find and speak to - indeed, learn from - the teachers who first walked into school with computers under their arm - there was a singular purpose in both cases. In healthcare this nut is a little harder to crack, but it comes down once again to allowing an organisation (of whatever nature) to better achieve its aims through the use of technology.

However, as IT has grown and developed, the issues framing this question have become more complex; IT has become more and more intertwined with core organisational processes. In brief, I would say that "IT" should nowadays appear on the same list of core organisational resources and priorities that includes the money, the buildings and the staff. After all, many organisations now depend upon their IT to carry out their financial and personnel management - and (only recently in education), with an increasing focus on, for example, "cashless catering", or security doors that tie back into a computer database of registered ID cards, the same dependencies are now forming in terms of site management as well. Accordingly, where you have a single entity that must facilitate - or entirely enable - so many others, it develops the need for its own standards and its own lines of authority, as long as these do not conflict with the overall vision for organisational development defined by senior managers. Ultimately, IT is like the law; yes, it was created in the common interest, but just as often it will be telling you what you can't do - and for a good reason. Accept this and move on.

Does business drive IT? Yes. IT (in industry) would have no role without the core elements of business that it underpins.

Does IT drive business? Yes. Just as the requirements for an IT system will be shaped and moulded by its host organisation's requirements, it is also the case that, sometimes, where the organisation ends up going in terms of the strategies that it develops and implements can be "driven" by technology.

Many times I have approached senior management with a technological solution to a problem they didn't know they had. Such problems can be identified, addressed and ultimately remedied by means of technology. Sometimes a requirement is formulated at a senior management level and presented to the technical experts for a solution; at other times, it is the technologist who comes to leadership with an entirely separate proposal. If they are as integrated within the organisation as they ought to be, they will conceive such things by themselves in addition to (N.B. not in competition with) the requirements that senior leaders set out.

In respect of IT, we have all seen the ups and downs of this technology. Now moving forward, what this world needs to realise is that:

a) Supporting is also doing;

b) IT is now critical as its own entity and should not be evaluated solely in the context of other areas of work;

c) If you approach your technologists by sharing in the simple love of technology that they felt when they entered IT in the first place, while at the same time showing them ways to see how they can apply their work in context, you will get the best out of them;

d) Balance is necessary in all things.

On that note, then, there is my answer. Business bore IT in the first place but now depends upon it. IT cannot exist without a common purpose (lest we forget!), but contributes just as much to probing the limits of this purpose as other areas of the organisation. They both "drive" each other, and the organisation that recognises and promotes this will do well.