For decades now, business and IT have been perpetuating the Division of Labor model to get work done. There have been a lot of reasons for this but the reality in today's world is none of those reasons make sense. Five recurring themes that have developed over the years include:

1. Business doesn’t really know what they want, so IT should go away for a few months in a vacuum and figure it out for them.
2. Business can’t effectively communicate their needs, so IT should force them to spell it out with ridiculously excessive documentation and hold them accountable if they change their minds.
3. Business has forgotten all of the technology decisions they've made so IT should manage those conflicting cross-departmental business decisions.
4. There are so many cool things IT could do to help business – we should just do them and ask for forgiveness later.
5. Business has difficulty communicating with technology types so they put requirements together in a series of documents and throw it over the fence to IT and wait to see what they come up with.

In today's world, technology changes rapidly and permeates every aspect of business. So is it still valid to be looking at the Division of Labor model as the right one for a business and technology marriage?

The only truthful answer is NO. It just doesn't make sense anymore.

It’s simply impossible to know everything about your industry (let alone someone else’s) because of how quickly things change. In order to write high quality software that adds real value to the business, there must be an ongoing, collaborative exchange of specialist knowledge between IT and business.

Continually fostering environments where knowledge exchange is done face-to-face with cross-directional, open, honest, and valid feedback creates better software. We understand that this approach is new to many on the business side of the fence. But we also know that if business will work with us to get out of their comfort zone and dip their toes into the world of technology (and vice versa), then we open the door to a collaborative knowledge exchange that will undoubtedly result in both a rewarding experience and a sucessful software project.

Tell us what you think. What have your experiences been with IT? How do you think the process can be improved?

About the Author

I’ve had the good fortune to travel and work internationally. I’ve also had the good fortune to have grown up in New Zealand and have lived the American “immigrant experience” for more than half of my life. I’ve also had an unorthodox musical journey that led me to and kept me in Kansas City. Music, IT and travel became partners along the way helping me appreciate multiple worldviews and the concepts of cross-disciplinary approaches to life and work. My non-conventional experiences reflect my meanderings about this interesting occupational field. The beauty of having been in IT for 30 years is that our solutions become predictably cyclic while our problems remain the same. Culture is a topic I’m rather obsessive about. I firmly believe that it will help to usher in a renaissance in American business – oddly enough in the hands of IT.