Business Quotient of an IT Professional in the SMAC world

By Dattatri Salagame On 26 Jun 2013

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As we move towards Social-leveraged, Cloud-enabled, Analytics-powered and Mobility engaged Enterprises, how is the life changing for a technology professional?

The technology spend from Business people is increasing. Whether you are an IT professional inside an enterprise as part of the CIO organization or as part of an IT services organization, the situation is the same: Increasingly, IT projects are no longer only in the realm of technology people. And the challenges are the same: While Business leaders primarily focus on time-to-market amongst other priorities, they are less inclined to understand the concept of technical debt which frustrates you, the IT Professional.

It is predicted that the technology spend from a CMO will overtake that of a CIO in the next few years. Even if I dont take this prediction seriously, I already see few changes on the ground. In the last one year or so, I find my team and me increasingly talking to Executives other than CIO who are functional CXO’s, Retail stores heads, Distribution heads, and Entrepreneurs with non-IT background. These people are leading business initiatives where technology is inseparable from the core business process. For example, improving customer experience in a chain of retail stores is a business process, which is 100% an IT project.

Given the above changing context from a purely application development perspective to a business process centric one, what is expected out of you as an IT professional? Following comes to my mind:

You need to tune into the business vision of the project: Is it enhancing customer experience? Is it enhancing faster decision making? Simply put, You need to improve your Business IQ
You need to have clear first hand awareness of customer challenges, needs, concerns, desires, and expectations. You need to be a good conversationalist, a good listener. You need to question business value, challenge assumptions rather than only being an order taker
You need to think like an end customer (consumer) and design software in a way people want to consume them. You need to be empathetic as well as intuitive
Your thinking should undergo a major change: it is Business process first rather than Technology first. You are expected to contribute toward enhancing business processes which are impacted by the new technologies
You need to think more on the lines of producing working software early and frequently rather than a long drawn water-fall model where people usually get bogged down by documentation & endless change requests. Agility is important but prevent Chaos with a flexible governance including Business Users

The above traits were required in the last decade also. You argue. I agree that that these were required earlier also, but only as nice-to-have traits. Now, in the SMAC era, where the project life cycles are getting shortened, business executives have increased their technology spend, the above traits are increasingly becoming must-have traits for an IT professional.

In short, IT project is not merely an IT project any more. It is a business project. You would be dealing with Business users more often. With the consumerization of technology, business users know what to expect from multiple technology enabled initiatives. You would be better off if you think like a business partner, a consultant, co-creating the journey around applications along with the business users, rather than restricting yourself to technology speak. After all, the whole purpose of technology is to make the business better, life simpler for employees and customers. Technology is a great enabler for Happy People, Happy Customers.