How does your organization’s IT department support the business? Beyond the daily help desk calls, when it comes to strategic IT-related decisions, who should be involved? Should those with IT know-how have most of the say, or should operations personnel make the call? Can they work side-by-side to make this salient decision?

A 2007 article in The Economist reported that “[a] large number of both IT and non-IT executives say that the primary obstacle to alignment is a poor understanding among business leaders of how IT should support business objectives.” The article further reports that the “perception is reversed when it comes to how well IT executives understand the business. Only 24 percent of IT executives identified IT’s lack of business understanding as a chief obstacle, whereas 33 percent of non-IT executives perceived this to be the case.”