CIO Magazine Realizes "IT Alignment" Is Dead

I took a look at the newest print edition of CIO Magazine and saw the story IT Value Is Dead. Long Live Business Value. (Registration is needed for the whole article, but you don't need it.) The article includes these gems:

The end of IT-business alignment is nigh. And no one is happier about it than the business-focused CIO.

“If you stand in front of an audience of CIOs and start talking about IT-business alignment, at best you get eye rolls, and at worst you get people walking out of the room...”

[A]lignment, it turns out, is not the ultimate end for corporate IT. In fact, says Dave Aron, vice president and fellow in Gartner’s CIO Research group, the language of IT-business alignment—encouraged and endorsed for more than a decade by industry analysts, consultants and, for a time, this magazine—is now dangerously counterproductive, setting IT apart from the enterprise even as technology itself becomes more inextricably entrenched in it.

You heard it here already! For example in this Tweet:

I reject the notion that companies have "business" elements to which the "non-business" must align. There's only one business, or should be.

I'm pleased to see organizations like CIO and Gartner connect with reality. Now we have to see how long it takes to banish "IT alignment" talk from the mindshare of other publishers, speakers, and so-called thought leaders.

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