"I Just Want to Get My Catalog Online"
Working in the Industrial and regulated sectors (which is most of them), sometimes the goals are quite simple. In many ways, a lot of the industry feels a bit like "back to the future." The business goals are simple, not measurable, and feel like a task that the IT group must perform rather than a business growth opportunity.
Try to get the business more involved than this? Good luck. So what to do in this instance?
* Recognize IT holds the cards: Requirements and language must suit the needs of the primary decisionmaker. A technical evaluation may be your most important.
* Fancy UI need not apply. Many IT shops care less about backoffice logins and more about which cloud it runs in, or if the ERP will be connected properly, and by who.
* Recognize Marketing as a silent influencer but not a driver. Often, they will not even contribute to the requirements or goals for the initiative until well after the project is done.
* Innovation Can Be Seen as a Negative. For an organization that changes systems once every five or ten years, a fast-changing system can be viewed as a negative. Why? System change can lead to costs.
This is changing, although slowly. The leading edge have built in-market systems that are performant, user-friendly, and revenue-generating. But most companies are left wandering the desert. Other than "we must be easier to do business with" you may not get anything at all from the business teams after this comment.
