| | DECEMBER 202019CIOReviewRelationships between business practitioners and technologists have moved through a sometimes tumultuous evolution. The earliest collaborations were centered on-highly specialized business problems, where the technologists hailed from mathematical and engineering disciplines. Communications were focused on very specific tasks with easily defined outcomes resulting in dedicated, restricted-use applications. As applications grew in scope and complexity, monolithic ERP solutions emerged, and technology became a career. Communications with business practitioners often strained under a load of complex jargon and idealistic, rigid processes.By the end of the last decade, technology had become opaque, burdensome and costly. Desperate for something simpler business practitioners, fired by the consumerization of IT and the birth of the app, turned to shadow IT. Far from an ideal world, they struggled with unsupported, poorly secured and isolated toolsets; while technologists wrestled with a loss of control. Out of this turmoil, two critical future factors emerged, business practitioners skilled up in understanding the impact of technology on business and technologists discovered technology as a business and the power of technology underpinning business strategy.Galvanized by greater cohesion, technologists and business practitioners stand ready for the next decade of collaboration. Ways of working and supporting toolsets have evolved to empower this next evolution.Collaborative Ways of WorkingThere have been two major shifts in the way business practitioners and technologists are tackling business problems and are driving collaboration. Firstly, the Agile method; born out of software development, Agile is not only being applied more broadly but critically provides both of these protagonists a singular point of focus; the customer. Secondly, a shift away from viewing software development and implementation as projects towards the more outcomes orientated notion of products, has made business practitioners more engaged and technologists more commercially astute.At the core of Agile lies collaboration. At each stage of development, business practitioners together with technologists seek to consult and involve the customer in what is being delivered. By doing so, all stakeholders are compelled to uncover unique and compelling features that will delight the user and drive business outcomes. The continuously evolving product may grow to become complex over time, but the fact that it started from simple roots, was built in collaboration, keeps everyone engaged. In essence, technology is being reinvented; this time not inside the development laboratories of large software houses or in some suburban garage, but side-by-side with the customers, business practitioners and the technologists.As the approach to software development and implementations shift from projects to products, the role business practitioners' Darren WilliamsBy Darren Williams, CIO, Device TechnologiesTHE VALUE OF IT AND BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP ­ FROM SILOS TO COLLABORATION WITH PURPOSECIO INSIGHTS
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