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Business-IT Confluence
by Vaughan Merlyn on Feb 27, 2008 - 09:22 AM read 1894 times Source: http://itorganization2017.wordpress.com/?p=184 |
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I’ve said before, I learn so much (perhaps most?) from my clients. I’m out at Pebble Beach for one of BSG Alliance’s Senior Executive Summit meetings. I’ve been presenting our research on Reaching Level 3 Business-IT Maturity. Before my session, at the opening dinner, a client was asking me about my presentation, and as I described my thesis to him, he said, “Very interesting. It sounds like a confluenceof business and IT.”
I loved the term, and used it in my session yesterday. Everyone liked it! According to Merriam-Webster Online, con-flu-ence means:
1:a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point <a happy confluence of weather and scenery>
2 a:the flowing together of two or more streams b:the place of meeting of two streams c:the combined stream formed by conjunction
I’ve been using the term convergence to describe how the role of IT in business is transforming, but confluenceworks so much better - a happy confluence of business and IT, the flowing together of business and IT, the place of meeting of the streams of business management and IT management, the combined business-IT stream formed by their conjunction. So, what does IT look like circa 2017? Like a confluence of business and IT. I’ll pick up this them in subsequent posts.
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BTM Institute
a reply to Business-IT Confluence
by Herman
on Feb 27, 2008 - 03:30 PM read 94 times
While I'm sure some of the basis for your theory of Level 3 Business-IT Maturity stems from the theories forwarded by the BTM Institute (or some common ancestor there-of), I thought it was worth mentioning this organization and some of their work in the context of your research. (My apologies if earlier conversations already discussed this group.) The group's seminal work, Winning the Three-Legged Race, (November 2005) proposes that symbiotic relationships of technology to business can be divided into three categories: Alignment, Synchronization and Convergence. They illustrate these categories as seen below.
(Click image to enlarge)Interestingly, the same group later published another book, Six Billion Minds, which explores management challenges and opportunities in the face of a truly global community. Many of the themes in this book dovetail nicely with the concepts of collaboration in a 2.0 world. -
Source of Business-IT Maturity Model
a reply to BTM Institute
in a conversation thread started here
by Vaughan Merlyn on Feb 28, 2008 - 08:26 AM read 83 timesActually, to set the record straight, the source for the 3-level Business-IT Maturity Model was not the BTM Insitute (or some common ancestor thereof) as you suggest, but a multi-year, longitudinal multi-company research program I led at Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation about 15 years ago. This work, in turn, was inspired by Richard Nolan's Stage Theory first posited in 1974.
In any case, my point was that while many of us have talked for some years about business-IT convergence, I suggest that a term introduced by a client this week - confluence - may be more apt.
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Re: Setting the record straight
a reply to Source of Business-IT Maturity Model
in a conversation thread started here
by Herman on Feb 28, 2008 - 09:06 AM read 87 times
Thanks for the clarification -- I certainly did not intend to steal credit from your work. Rather, some may find additional collaboration/inspiration from the set of contributors on the BTM book. (below)
And yes, the term "confluence" may be quite apt (the connotation of a "happy confluence" suggests the influence of external forces upon the business landscape - helping to shape the interaction of business and IT; as opposed to the convergence, which suggests a concerted conscious effort by both disciplines- without regard to external factors).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0131877267/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-4618399-3829667#reader-link
(Click image to enlarge)
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By: Susan Scrupski
a reply to Business-IT Confluence
by Susan Scrupski on Feb 29, 2008 - 09:48 PM read 137 times
Source: http://itorganization2017.wordpress.com/?p=184#comment-187
Hi Vaughan. As you may (or may not!) know, Confluence is the name of the industry’s most successful wiki. From the web site: “Confluence is used by over 4,600 organisations in more than 75 countries around the globe - across Fortune 1000, public enterprise, science and technology sectors.”
So, yes, confluence is indeed an excellent word for collaboration and meshing the interests of business and IT…
HEY! Happy Birthday!
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Business-IT confluence
a reply to By: Susan Scrupski
in a conversation thread started here
by Vaughan Merlyn on Mar 01, 2008 - 06:43 AM read 94 timesThe fact that Confluence is a product name did not register. I guess I'll have to sue them! And thanks for the birthday wish. I actually feel like a teenager! But I don't think that's legal ;-)
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