In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, aligning business objectives with technical capabilities remains a persistent challenge for many organisations. Leaders must not only grasp the complexities of IT operations but also understand the importance of creating meaningful incentives, maintaining robust systems, and preparing for the unexpected.
This post outlines five key strategies to bridge the gap between IT and business: fostering mutual understanding, creating purpose-driven incentives, maintaining system health, adopting a platform-centric approach, and embracing antifragility. These strategies will help organisations become more resilient, adaptable, and better equipped for the challenges of tomorrow.
1. Bring IT and business closer together
Do your IT project updates in steering committee meetings appear polished yet detached, with status reports that look “green” on the surface but conceal deeper issues beneath? Take a step back from routine and invest an hour with a senior technical colleague in a whiteboard session. This simple exercise offers invaluable insights into the intricacies of IT operations and the rationale behind technical decisions.
Conversely, it’s surprising how little developers—those making daily micro-decisions—often know about the business domain. Misaligned assumptions can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Enhancing their business acumen produces solutions that are not only technically robust but also genuinely valuable.
This cross-functional understanding isn’t exclusive to IT. For example, a major Belgian retailer requires all employees, regardless of role, to spend time working in a local store during onboarding. This practice deepens their appreciation of the core business.
As a leader, you don’t need to immerse yourself in every project, but selectively engaging in strategic initiatives can reveal the complexities of software delivery and inform better decision-making.
At AE, we prioritise a deep understanding of our clients’ businesses. Our approach begins with a “Think” phase, employing methodologies such as design thinking to explore the problem space, followed by a “Build” phase that brings business and IT closer through collaboration, user surveys, and testing. This synergy fosters innovative, practical digital solutions. By sharing these insights widely, organisations can cultivate a shared understanding while ensuring everyone interprets results in a consistent way.
Further Reading
The Architect Elevator – Martin Fowler
2. Shift focus from deadlines to incentives
Continuing to rely on the same methods while expecting different outcomes often leads to the same results. This is especially common in IT, where business leaders define scope, set deadlines, and hope for the best, despite knowing the limitations of this approach.
Deadlines can be effective for predictable, straightforward tasks but tend to fall short in the dynamic world of software development. Although agile methodologies address this by emphasising incremental progress, they often falter without full business commitment.
Instead of enforcing rigid timelines, consider adopting Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). By aligning IT teams with the purpose behind each initiative, OKRs enable teams to self-organise, adapt, and innovate. For example, one organisation aimed to double course completion rates, allowing product teams to experiment with gamification. IT facilitated this by creating flexible infrastructure, enabling rapid MVP testing and A/B experiments that uncovered the most effective solutions.
At AE, we balance scope and budget using a “capped budget – flexible scope” model. This approach keeps clients informed and in control, while delivering tangible outcomes iteratively and efficiently.
Further reading
- Measure What Matters – John Doerr
- Doing Agile the Right Way
3. Keep systems clean and sustainable
In business, debt can fuel growth, yet in IT, “technical debt” is often viewed negatively. This term, frequently misunderstood, leads to frustration and the neglect of essential system maintenance.
Acknowledging the importance of maintenance shifts the narrative from a burden to a strategic investment. Rather than dismissing it, measure the maintenance load—time spent on upkeep versus new development. Breaking down technical debt into actionable tasks, such as minimising repetitive updates or reclaiming lost context, enables organisations to invest in long-term efficiency.
Innovations like improved tooling, meaningful metrics, and AI can streamline this process. For example, AE developed a virtual assistant that grants developers instant access to years of technical documentation, reducing onboarding time from three years to one.
By embedding technical debt management into your digital strategy and aligning OKRs with maintenance goals, you create a sustainable foundation for growth and innovation.
Further reading
- Stop Saying “Technical Debt” – Stack Overflow
4. Adopt a platform mindset
To remain competitive, organisations must deliver innovations swiftly and cost-effectively. The automotive industry provides a useful analogy: car manufacturers employ standardised platforms to produce diverse models while reducing complexity and cost. For example, Audi’s Q4 e-tron and Volkswagen’s ID.3 share the MEB platform, enabling quicker production and adaptability.
A similar approach can streamline IT operations. Providing teams with ready-made platforms—such as GDPR-compliant customer databases—removes repetitive tasks and frees up capacity for innovation. Centralised maintenance and governance not only improve efficiency but also enable rapid adaptation to evolving demands.
Modernisation underpins successful digital transformation. By applying the “5 R” framework—Rehost, Refactor, Rearchitect, Rebuild, or Replace—organisations can balance legacy systems with new solutions. Leaders should emphasise reusability and scalability, ensuring today’s investments align with tomorrow’s needs.
By strategically combining custom and off-the-shelf solutions, organisations can create systems that are agile, adaptable, and resilient enough to meet future challenges.
Further reading
- Platforms = (Architecture + DDD + Automation) x Wholesale – Gregor Hohpe
5. Leverage uncertainty to build resilience
The concept of “antifragility,” introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, emphasises systems that grow stronger under stress. Whether through enhanced supply chains post-COVID or reinforced cybersecurity after breaches, antifragile systems convert challenges into opportunities.
Designing such systems involves preparing for “black swan” events—unlikely but high-impact scenarios. Residuality theory, popularised by Barry O’Reilly, provides a framework for developing systems that flourish under extreme conditions.
By exploring highly improbable scenarios early in the design process, systems can evolve beyond a naive, single-path architecture. For instance, planning for regulatory shifts or weaknesses in cryptographic systems ensures readiness for major changes. Even if these scenarios never materialise, the resulting robustness enables more agile adaptation and innovation.
Embracing antifragility means not fearing uncertainty, but proactively designing for it. This approach mitigates risk and unlocks new potential, turning challenges into catalysts for growth.
Further reading
-An Introduction to Residuality Theory: Software Design Heuristics for Complex Systems
Conclusion
By fostering collaboration between IT and business, replacing rigid deadlines with purpose-driven incentives, maintaining clean systems, adopting a platform mindset, and embracing antifragility, organisations can thrive in the digital era. This holistic approach not only addresses immediate challenges but also lays the groundwork for resilience, adaptability, and long-term success. Empower your teams to innovate confidently and build a foundation for sustainable growth in an unpredictable future.
