CIO Executive Board research has identified two common problems with the IT-business interface: weak IT-business engagement relationships and unclear business expectations on IT’s contribution to innovation. Overcoming these barriers are key to helping CIOs enable revenue growth and innovation.

Survey results indicate measurable benefits (in project results, project costs, and on-time delivery) for higher IT-business engagement. There are four important implications from the research:

• Variation within a single IT department can mask widespread disengagement. Even if some teams are very engaged with their business partners, this may hide an underlying problem as engagement varies widely from project to project.

• IT staff skills are an important factor in IT-business engagement. IT staff skills are important to engagement, but recognizing that these skills are hard to find and take time to develop, CIOs should not neglect other quicker-to-implement engagement strategies.

• In IT-business interactions, quality is more important than quantity. Increased face time has little impact on engagement, but frequent discussions of a strategic nature make for better interactions with the business.

• Explicit rules of engagement are essential to quality IT-business interactions. The IT organization should define then communicate IT’s role, as well as codify and get buy-in on expected behaviors for business partners.

Clear business expectations of IT’s contribution to innovation also make for a stronger IT-business interface. This study points out four levers to systematize IT’s contribution to innovation:

• The CIO can help instill innovation and curiosity in the business. CIOs should ensure IT staff are exposed to external ideas about innovation, and make business leaders aware of recent examples of IT-enabled business innovation.

• Qualitative rigor is crucial. While ROI and other financial measures are vital later in the IT project evaluation phase, lightweight but rigorous qualitative criteria are better for filtering the IT project idea pipeline.

• In IT business cases, focus on what will be learned. Identify the uncertainties and testable hypotheses that can be built into the project, so that important learnings are captured and applied to future projects and to the business.

• Project sequencing should test biggest uncertainties first. If projects “fail fast” based on the biggest uncertainties, learnings are still captured and problem projects are ended painlessly.

• Ernst & Young distributes a brochure to IT staff, IT-business liaisons, executives and senior managers on ways internal business teams are using IT to spur innovation.

• Chiquita Brands assigns points to innovation ideas based on a qualitative assessment of potential impact to determine which ones get priority.

• The Chubb Corporation structures innovation business cases as testable hypotheses rather than ROI-driven analyses. This way, early-stage ideas can be tested without having to clear unrealistic financial hurdles that can stifle innovation.

CIO Executive Board members can access related CIO Executive Board materials at the CIO Executive Board website.

The CIO Executive Board is a membership of senior executives with a shared commitment to steward enterprise-wide IT initiatives. The membership offers a set of unique services and practical tools designed to assist IT leaders with their most pressing managerial, communications, and decision-making challenges, and serves more than 1,000 CIOs and Heads of IT worldwide.