Introduction

My observations of business and technology over the last 15 years compel me to write this book and to answer this question: Why aren't we getting real business value out of technology? One thing is sure ”companies that continue to repeat the mistakes of the past will never reap the rewards of the future. Most companies fail to capitalize on the technologies they already have; and many more are poised to meet this same fate with the next big technology fad spawned in Silicon Valley and propelled by venture capitalists. Whether it's wireless, Web services, or the latest and greatest in nanotechnology, companies will never get value ”real or perceived ”without first solving the business/technology disconnect.

This book will begin by illustrating some of the ways the disconnect can manifest itself in the enterprise. These examples reveal an unequivocal truth: In order to understand, communicate, and plan how they should utilize technology in the enterprise, companies first need to align three key areas ”business, process, and technology. But to achieve alignment among these areas requires a fundamentally different approach than those used before ”one that brings these disciplines together in a way that all can understand. This approach creates unprecedented visibility into how business and technology decisions are made, and provides the means for tracing decisions back and forth between the two, so that companies can discover and communicate interdependencies.

This approach is called Business Technology Management, or BTM. In the pages that follow, the principles, activities, and governance that make up BTM will unfold to provide the structure and the mindset to help any company in any industry get real business value from IT.

I am not alone in my views on the disconnect, or in my ideas about what's necessary to solve it. Many chief executive officers (CEOs), chief information officers (CIOs), industry gurus and academics ”such as the contributors to this book (some of whom have been grappling with the disconnect since the earliest days of IT) ”believe that the time has arrived for companies to adopt a structured approach to aligning business and technology.