A large government or corporate organization will face tension between distributed, departmental needs and the needs of the central organization. This is one of the central themes explored in Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross's excellent book,
IT Governance. They wrote about one approach to foster two-way communication (as well as to help get buy-in), when faced with such tension:
"Business/IT Relationship Managers Local business units and functions can find centrally coordinated mandates onerous or confusing. Business/IT relationship managers play an important role in communicating mandates and their implications and supporting the needs of business unit managers while helping them see benefits rather than inconveniences. Effective relationship managers must be true hybrids – equally comfortable discussing business issues, such as effective market segmentation, and technical issues, such as the best design of a distributed database to collect market segment information. When they succeed, relationship managers make any governance archetype more effective."We will consider some other areas of this book in upcoming posts, as well.
