“Change happens in organisations,” writes Sharm Manwani.  “Sometimes you have a choice – to be in the driving seat, ride as a passenger or not to get onto the bus.  At other times the choice is made for you.”

IT-Enabled Business Change is a book about – surprise! – change in organisations.  But it’s a project book with a difference: it breaches that murky divide between IT and the ‘business’.  I hear this a lot, as if IT isn’t part of the business.  Manwani’s book is an attempt to bring the two areas together, in what he calls a ‘hybrid’ change:

“The label of ‘IT project’ is arguably simpler and descriptive since projects deliver change and IT describes the type of solution.  However, calling it an IT project implies an over-dependent focus on the technology part of the solution.  In contrast, ‘business change’ makes it clear that the focus is on a change in the business activities of an organisation which may or may not be enabled by IT.”

Hence IT enabled business change, which is a bit of a mouthful, but more accurate for most of the stuff we do on a day-to-day basis.  Hurrah!  Why don’t other projects talk about this cross-over more explicitly?

Manwani does re-invent the wheel a bit when it comes to the project lifecycle.  Tweak it, anyway.  He (with colleagues) has developed a new lifecycle for this type of hybrid project.  I would argue that most projects fall into the ‘IT enabled’ category, these days, and therefore we probably don’t need a separate lifecycle for them, but Manwani sets out his new lifecycle as distinct from the systems development lifecycle.  The steps are:

1. Align business and IT goals
2. Define business improvement
3. Design business change
4. Implement business change
5. Deliver benefits

The book then covers these five steps in more detail, and each section ends with questions relating to a case study.  I particularly liked the business improvement section, as I thought the description of systems thinking and how this relates to getting a technology solution right was very appropriate.  The book also champions business analysts and the role they play in getting the ‘right’ answer – my series on working with business analysts starts next week.

Manwani’s key point is that IT departments have to approach change as more than just shiny new computers or software.  A forward-thinking CIO can have a massive impact on the bottom line of a business, by making sure the right projects are delivering the right things.  He cites a study in which 51% of senior IT mangers said that “they were lacking in knowledge of business, both in general and in their industry, and the ability to apply this knowledge to real situations.”  Good grief.  If that’s you – or even if you work in a different bit of your company to IT but still don’t know what the rest of your organisation does – get out there and speak to your internal customer base.

If you’d like to win a copy of Manwani’s book, please send me a message with the words ‘I’m enabling change’ before 30 November 2009, and I’ll put your name in the hat.

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