by Jack Thornton

Created on: March 13, 2009

For many years, IT departments have operated as a bastion of magic and alchemy. With the right incantation and spells (requirements documents and test cases for example) new and wonderful systems would be developed. With an error or omission, those same incantations and efforts could produce vastly different results. This has not been intentional, but merely the result of two groups speaking different languages and having different expectations.

In some cases the failures have come from the business side, with attempts made to define the problem as merely producing a specified output and telling IT what tools and processes to use to produce that specific output. Other cases have been IT telling the business what information they will get and how it will be presented without understanding the problem to be solved. Sometimes, failures have been a combination of both.

What is needed is a way to let everybody have meaningful input into the development of a system, with the result being a partnership of IT and business. Ideally, the solution will result from the business being able to define the ultimate problems that need to be solved with IT being able to use their knowledge of tools and the development lifecycle to produce a system that solves those problems. Along the way both groups provide into into the processes, controls, checks, and steps required to get there.

For this to happen, there need to be more people that can speak both languages while obtains respect and trust from both groups. This is a difficult task, and anybody who undertakes that role will find it impossible to please everybody all the time, and will need to be as good at politics as they are at understanding the business and how IT works best. An MBA can help significantly with a lot of this.

An MBA is a useful certification because it requires learning at least the basics of how business works. Properly done, it ensures a foundation exists for understanding the intricate details of a real-life business or business unit. It also demonstrates an ability to learn about a wide variety of topics. This ability can earn the first beachead of trust with the IT crowd. Making an effort to learn about what IT can do will broaden that trust and establish goodwill that will be necessary to aligning the efforts of business with the efforts of IT.

At the same time, speaking the same language as the non-IT members of the business will only help an MBA a little bit. It will be necessary to build the trust and

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