Why the Business-IT Gap Exists and How to Begin Closing It

The divide between business and IT has been a persistent challenge in organizations for decades. Despite widespread recognition that technology is crucial for competitive advantage, many organizations still struggle to create true partnership between their business and technology groups.

The Reality of the Gap

As the research team behind the guidance paper “Winning Together” notes,

“Both sides express frustration. Business leaders report feeling stymied by what they perceive as the high costs and rigidity of their technology groups, and thus seek to work around those groups with so-called ‘Shadow IT.’ On the flip side, technology leaders express frustration with business leaders who view Technology as a cost center, seem to expect a purely transactional funding-based relationship, and who push back on any investment that does not yield immediate and tangible benefits.”

The cost of this misalignment is significant. Dr. Nicole Forsgren and colleagues found in their research that organizations with strong business-IT alignment significantly outperform their peers. As detailed in Accelerate, high-performing organizations deliver software changes 208 times more frequently and recover from incidents 2,604 times faster than their low-performing counterparts.

Root Causes of the Gap

To begin addressing this divide, we must first understand its causes:

Different Mental Models and Languages

Business and IT typically operate with fundamentally different decision-making frameworks. According to Flow Engineering, the business thinks primarily in terms of competitors, customers, product portfolios, and financials, while IT focuses on technical architecture, system reliability, and engineering practices.

This difference manifests in language as well. When business leaders talk about “going faster,” they often mean faster time-to-market for new features. Meanwhile, IT might interpret that as needing to accelerate deployment frequency. Both are talking about speed, but in completely different contexts.

Structural Barriers

Traditional organizational hierarchies physically separate business and IT functions. Sooner Safer Happier points out that these siloed structures create a situation where teams optimize for their local goals rather than overall business outcomes.

Additionally, project-based funding models reinforce transactional relationships. As “Winning Together” explains, funding technology project-by-project creates artificial short-term thinking and makes it difficult to invest in long-term capabilities.

Cultural Differences

The research presented in “Measuring Leadership” highlights how business and technology teams often have different cultural norms. Business culture tends to value bold action and risk-taking, while technology culture often emphasizes precision and risk mitigation.

Dr. Ron Westrum’s research on organizational cultures, referenced in the paper “How to Thrive in Building a Learning Culture,” demonstrates how these cultural differences affect information flow. In bureaucratic or pathological organizations, information gets stuck in silos, while generative organizations share information freely across boundaries.

First Steps to Bridge the Gap

While fully bridging the business-IT gap takes time, there are concrete steps you can begin taking immediately:

1. Take Stock of Business Context

Technology leaders should invest time in understanding the broader business context in which they operate. The authors of “Winning Together” suggest asking questions like:

“Who are your company’s key competitors and how rapidly is the competitive landscape changing? Who are your target customers and what factors drive their buying decisions? What makes your organization’s products or services special—what’s the ‘secret sauce’?”

This knowledge helps technology leaders frame technology decisions in business terms and demonstrates a commitment to business outcomes.

2. Map Your Value Streams

Value Stream Mapping is a powerful technique for creating shared understanding. According to Flow Engineering, mapping your end-to-end value streams reveals:

• Where handoffs and dependencies create delays.
• How work flows (or doesn’t flow) across organizational boundaries.
• Where opportunities exist for improvement.

This exercise brings business and IT stakeholders together around a common visual representation of how value is delivered to customers.

3. Measure What Matters Together

“Winning Together” emphasizes the importance of shared metrics that connect technology activities to business outcomes. Dominica DeGrandis and colleagues suggest five key flow metrics:

• Flow Time: How long work takes from start to finish.
• Flow Efficiency: The ratio of active work to wait time.
• Flow Load: How much work is in progress.
• Flow Distribution: The balance of different work types.
• Flow Velocity: The rate of value delivery.

When the business and IT track these metrics together, they create a shared language for discussing improvements.

4. Create Regular Forums for Dialogue

Establish a dedicated time for business and IT leaders to discuss mutual concerns, opportunities, and challenges. “How to Thrive in Building a Learning Culture” emphasizes that these shouldn’t be status updates, but genuine dialogue about shared outcomes.

Effective forums include:

• Joint planning sessions for upcoming initiatives.
• Regular reviews of both business and technical metrics.
• Open discussions about market opportunities and technical capabilities.
• Shared retrospectives on what’s working and what’s not.

5. Experiment with Product-Based Funding

Begin exploring alternatives to traditional project-based funding. You might start with a single product or value stream where you can experiment with:

• Stable, persistent teams rather than temporary project teams.
• Outcome-based funding rather than feature-based funding.
• Metrics that balance short-term features with long-term sustainability.

This creates room for more strategic technology investment while still maintaining accountability for business results.

Next Steps on the Journey

These initial steps won’t instantly transform your organization, but they begin creating the foundation for a deeper partnership. In the upcoming parts of this series, we’ll explore:

• Part 2: Building Shared Understanding and Trust
• Part 3: Creating Joint Ownership of Outcomes
• Part 4: Sustaining Long-Term Partnership

By starting with these practical actions today, you’ll be well-positioned to deepen the business-IT partnership in ways that create lasting value for your organization.

- About The Authors

Leah Brown

Managing Editor at IT Revolution working on publishing books and guidance papers for the modern business leader. I also oversee the production of the IT Revolution blog, combining the best of responsible, human-centered content with the assistance of AI tools.

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