As the pace of digitalisation continues to increase, more and more businesses are carrying out complex projects requiring significant involvement from IT teams. Effective communication between the business leaders who commission projects and the IT teams who carry them out is crucial for getting these projects over the line. All too often, however, project progress is hamstrung by communication gaps between corporate and IT.

Deltra recently hosted a webinar on bridging the communication gap between corporate and IT teams.

We were joined by CIO and Change Manager, Pierre Montersino, a former CIO known for his strategic business and technology leadership, leveraging digital innovation to propel business growth. Pierre’s background makes him a key figure in transformational strategies and digital innovation. Throughout the webinar he provided a wealth of insights into the difficulties IT and leadership teams often face when working together on complex projects, and how they can be overcome.

To help you see what you missed, we’ve included the key points of our latest event round-up with all the information and guidance that was shared during the meeting.

Business leaders and IT teams often fail to understand each other. 

For business leaders, IT can often seem like a black box whose problems seem to arise out of nowhere, with causes and solutions which are frustratingly opaque. As a result, business leaders and project managers aren’t always in a position to understand the precise technical requirements of projects they need to oversee.

Since it is business leaders and project managers who set budgets and establish timelines, IT staff working further downstream can find themselves grappling with unrealistic deadlines and budgets.

For their part, IT teams can be blind to the wider business needs driving a project and may struggle to relay the technical challenges they are confronted with back to the leadership team. As a result, their reasons for pushing back on unrealistic demands aren’t immediately clear, requiring objections to be escalated and assessed, resulting in confused and inconsistent project progress.

The challenge is to find ways to overcome this impasse.

Bridging the gap

Too often, the various parties on a project only speak to each other on the phone when problems occur. There was common agreement amongst the attendees on the importance of finding ways to give project stakeholders from both sides a common space where they can have more involved discussions about the project.   

Since in practice workers tend to spend most of their time grappling with their own work, it can be challenging to find the time or opportunity to come together to have conversations. Having an official channel to foster this kind of interaction can be of enormous benefit to projects, since teams may otherwise have a tendency to fragment as individuals focus on getting through their workloads.

Doing so provides valuable opportunities to break down barriers between teams and team members and have more holistic and constructive conversations about projects and project needs.  

Pierre suggested that an effective technique for ensuring that workers from the corporate side are involved in projects and understand the technical challenges can be to approach the executives of the organisation running or sponsoring the project and ask them to appoint someone to come in and help see the project over the line.

Understanding the people who are solving problems for you can make a big difference to your ability to get projects done. By giving executives and business leaders as many opportunities as possible to be involved in a project can immensely improve lines of communication, narrowing the gap between corporate and IT. By contrast, failing to get executives involved in projects early only increases the chances that a project will fail.

Different priorities

Communication between business leadership and IT teams is also complicated by the fact that they are usually working with very different sets of KPIs. Where this is the case, it can lead to both sides prioritising different aspects of the project, and having different understandings of project aims.

While establishing shared KPIs may not always be straightforward, it is important for both sides to understand how their particular KPIs are complementary, rather than opposed.

Pierre argued that transparent reporting can be highly beneficial in demonstrating how one team’s work benefits the other and can help teams understand each other’s priorities better, leading to better communication and collaboration.

Cultural differences

The participants also discussed the communication challenges arising when project teams are spread out over multiple countries and continents.  
Language barriers and unfamiliar accents can hamper communication, making collaboration challenging. Cultural differences between teams in different countries can also have a surprising impact.

A focus on the quality rather than the quantity of communication was agreed to be critical here. Visual aids and an attention to storytelling are powerful techniques for improving understanding. In some instances, a switch to written communication can be an effective means of preventing confusion. Peer-reviewing communications to team members before they are sent out can help businesses avoid time-consuming and costly misunderstandings.

Summary

While poor communication between IT and corporate teams can result in dysfunctional projects and missed deadlines, there are some straightforward ways to ensure that communication gaps are closed.

Involving leadership personnel in projects early and giving workers from both sides of the corporate/IT divide regular opportunities to have meaningful discussions has a large and beneficial impact. Ensuring that both sides have a deep understanding of each other’s priorities also improves collaboration, increasing the likelihood of project success.

If you’re interested in attending one of our future webinars, speak to: Fergus Walsh.