Have you ever wondered how large (multinational) organizations ensure that their most important business initiatives are supported by the correct IT solutions? How do they choose the right priorities and sequence of IT projects if there are dozens of topics on the list? Since you read this article, your business is probably already well organized but you want to optimize the cooperation between IT and the business, am I right? I expect you have great specialists, clever Business Process Owners and busy managers that make sure all the projects on your road map are professionally covered. As well, you presumably have an IT department that makes sure all IT maintenance and governance are in fairly good shape. However, how do you convert the most important business requirements towards IT into successful solutions that benefit colleagues, customers and the so-called bottom line? This is where many companies struggle, especially when there are many business units that all have their own processes and systems. Here are five handy pointers that can help you to link your IT & Business needs effectively and efficiently. 1) Adjust your Organizational Structure Consider establishing a dedicated department where all global processes are maintained with correct master data definitions. When that is in place, you can start routing all business initiatives with IT components to pass through it via e.g. a global initiative list, along with descriptions, definitions, a business case, KPIs and a scored priority. When done, you’re all set up for the next step: The Linking Pin. 2) Install the ‘Linking Pin’ The next step is appointing one or more IT Business Partners, who will function as ´linking pin´ between your functional domains and your IT department. Some companies make do with only a few business partners while others have a need for many. These key people typically work in the Business Services department or in the IT organization – whatever works best for you. The IT Business Partner(s) will take care of one or more functional domain(s). They know the business- and IT stakeholders in that area, the business processes, the applications that support these processes, issues and the improvement areas. He or she is the go-to person for people on both sides, building the bridge between Business and IT, and then crossing that bridge every day back and forth! A known pitfall is to have a business partner with too many different functional domains and hence too many stakeholders and initiatives to manage. So beware of that. Most important benefits of having dedicated business partners visualize in strong communications, alignment and agreement. 3) Establish Key User Groups and Decision Boards Your business partners will make sure that on the business side there are Key User Groups consisting of people that actually 'push the buttons´. Key users are one of your most valuable assets when it comes to defining business requirements, execute user acceptance tests, drive implementation and training of colleagues on new functionality or processes. Each functional domain should have a decision board (DB), consisting of a few managers only that can decide which initiatives get highest priority and are therefore processed into actual IT projects; and which ones will not be worked on. The business partners should ensure that the decision boards meet regularly to review and score the initiatives that made it to the priority list. The most important benefit of the KUG and DB for your organization is that only the most important initiatives (those that are in line with mission, vision, strategy; have a positive business case; matter most to users and customers) will be worked on. A known pitfall in many companies is that business people over shouting others consume most of the available (IT) resources for system changes or enhancements that do not necessarily benefit the company as a whole. 4) Organize Portfolio Management When all of the ideas for projects, new functionality and changes to current systems have gone through the IT business partners you end up with a reliable project list that all stakeholders agreed upon with regard to content, timeline, costs, benefits and deliverables. Imagine how little discussion you will have throughout the company when all bases are covered! Your portfolio manager will only recognize projects and changes that come in via the defined channel and disregard anything else. 5) Implement effective Project Management With your business processes managed and the business partners in place, it is now time to ensure that the prioritized list of initiatives needing IT input is actionable and that functionality is delivered according to requirements. Agile Scrum teams can do a great job here, working with resource- & project managers. Extra tip: Prince2 or similar is a great method for project management of IT projects as a whole. Good luck!