The solution to bridge the gap between business and IT
For many consulting firms and software vendors bridging the gap between business and IT, is the holy grail. Apparently it is quite difficult because it exists for many years now and a "solution" is not there yet.
What's going on? The business and IT speak different languages. The business speaks human language and ICT professionals have their own language, more focused on computer systems. The ICT professionals have to do this, because it is them who need to make the translation into system requirements. In that translation the alignment with the business often goes wrong. Another root cause is that business often has difficulty to supply the requirements in a structured manner. Add these two factors together, and you have the famous "gap" between business and ICT.
The good news is that a solution is available! There are so-called requirements management systems which are able to deal with human language. Practise shows that the quality of the requirements increases by 50%, and requirements collection takes 20% less time! In short, the bridge exists now just apply it!!
Break the "agility versus quality" paradigm
To satisfy market demands, manufacturers are forced to constantly introduce new products. Customers expect excellent quality and services. Brand loyalty is decreasing. So, manufactures are forced to balance between a short time-to-market and quality. Even famous brands struggle with time-to-market and quality. Examples are product recalls, long queues for support and simply that the products (sometimes) just not work.
A major cause of quality problems is that the combination of the new product, new production processes and procedures are not sufficiently developed. It is too complex to do, especially if there are automated systems involved.
For years, there are solutions on the market to manage requirements. The Achilles heel of these solutions their technical orientation. End users no longer recognize the intricate specifications of their activities. Also, most implementations of traditional requirements solution do not integrate areas like manufacturing, logistics, human resources and finance it.
Fortunately, there are now solutions in requirements management area that understand semantics (meaning of words) in written language. So this allows you to capture requirements in plain language. Moreover, through the semantics correlations between the requirements, the user can see where his requirement is applied further. Practice shows that the quality of the requirements will increase by 50%, and collection will be 20% faster. So it’s possible: a shorter time-to-market with better quality!