I.T.-Business Alignment: 10 Best Practices - ' Create a Shared Pool '
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5. Create a Shared Pool of Bonus Money
Some consultants recommend the use of cross-department financial incentives. Companies struggle with this culturally, but Barry Rosenberg, a partner with technology consulting firm Pace Harmon, says this is a practice that has gone from being desirable to mandatory. Business and technology people should be aligned not just in their objectives but their incentives. "It has to be everyone in the pool together," Rosenberg says. "You can't have one team win and another lose."
Rosenberg adds that I.T.-business teams shouldn't just be rewarded for success, but also penalized for failure, in the form of a bonus that goes partially or completely unearned. "If you're doing a half-a-million-dollar project, that's one thing," he says. "But a lot of these projects are in the tens or hundreds of millions."
Success in most big projects comes down to having an airtight plan and seeing to it that everyone does his job correctly, Rosenberg says: "The issue is operationalizing it. If you can establish things so that the incentives to succeed are not unique to any one group, you get an exponential benefit in terms of your likelihood to succeed."
Next Best Practice: Install a High-Level I.T. Liaison in Every Business Unit
