The frequency with which the topic of IT and business alignment arises in conferences, books and magazines may suggest one of two things. The first possibility is that IT workers have trouble figuring out what it is their employers actually do. The second conceivable explanation is that ‘the business’ guards the company’s strategic information like a holy text, only passing on the bare minimum required.

Management consultant Richard Wyatt-Haines’s new book, Align IT: Business Impact Through IT, contains resources with which to overcome both of these situations. Ostensibly aimed at any executive interested in the application of technology in business, the book is really an arsenal of management techniques to enable IT professionals to intercept and decode an organisation’s hallowed strategy and translate it into technological objectives.

Filled with examples, theory and action points presented in a text book format, Align IT certainly provides plenty of food for thought for anybody pondering the business/IT divide. And the ongoing impact of that divide ensures that this book will find an eager audience.

Align IT may be as worthy a resource as any on the subject, but its existence also underscores the point that the chances of IT and business ever reading from the same page are slim.

Further reading

Agility applied Standard Life has emerged as one of the star performers of the UK’s life and pensions sector. And its bold adoption of agile IT techniques is credited as key to that elevation.