Common Communications Issues That Exist Between Business and Information Technology (IT)

Communication Issues and Differences

Discuss the common communications issues that exist between business and IT. Provide examples from your organization if available to illustrate the impact of these issues. Discuss methods for avoiding these issues.

Information Technology departments often have a substantially different communication cultures and styles than business related departments such as finance or accounting, because of IT's difference of short-term organizational priorities. Although all departments within an organization ideally share the same vision of profit and expansion as the result of success an innovation, communication conflicts can occur when, for example, an IT department wishes to conduct a costly testing procedure upon a new system that the finance department deems unnecessary. What seems necessary from a technical point-of-view seems financially spurious to one who does not understand the necessary software protocols of a new system's evolving development and lifecycle.

Likewise, when a HR department wishes to revise department hiring policy with an eye to expanding company affirmative action and brings qualitative rather than quantitative data to the table, an IT department may be unwilling to listen to a member of the staff that speaks in what seems to be vague generalities, rather than hard numbers, as is customary in their organizational subculture and frame of reference. (Paterson & Lindsay, 2000) But only when all coworkers in an organization in all departments align along their common beliefs can changes occur that will increase the group's effectiveness and its probability of survival.

For IT departments, the department's immediate priority is often on long-term systems and technological development, while for business departments such as marketing or finance, the priority is on 'what works' or the bottom line, in immediate financial terms. When the trial and error of testing new systems and of generating new solutions to existing problems seems subsumed to that of the immediate demands of the market in most other departments, the IT personnel must speak the business language to be fully understood, so their department priorities are not ignored. For example, it might behoove an IT person to state, 'if we don't conduce adequate systems testing, costly impingements from hackers, viruses, and worms could cost the company millions," rather than to splutter about the lack of integrity of the computers system if costly testing is not conducted right here and now.

Also, in business, personalities may play more of a role in office politics, than a critique of systems. IT might seem to be an enclosed culture to the eyes of many persons in the rest of the company, and a lack of familiarity can create hostility. But ultimately, the shared culture of an organization is a critical success factor in its process improvement efforts, and both IT and other members of the organization must mutually understand and appreciate the crucial and integrated nature of technology to modern business life as well as the need for IT to serve the larger roles of the organization, such as making a profit.

Thus, respect is always key in the creation of effective communication strategies. Respect also means knowing when to share information and responsibilities and when to delegate them. For instance, advices one IT professional at Kodak, Roger Wiegers, one potential solution is, for in-house projects, "even small ones developing internally reusable software components," to go through a formal, written requirements specification process," with all users, describing the system in terms the less technically oriented users can understand. Furthermore, IT people must "refuse to get caught in the trap of resolving "conflicting requirements" and negotiating financial agreements with the different customers involved," which is not the job of the department and can, at worst, make it seem as if IT is stepping on the toes of others, given that IT personnel are "rarely qualified to make those business-oriented decisions." (Wiegers, 1994)