ServiceNow and the rise of Business Technologists.

Currently, I consider myself fortunate that I am involved in helping a client to implement App Engine Studio. We were in a vision designing workshop and I must admit identification of the North Star is very critical. There was one term that was highlighted in the vision statement called ‘Fusion teams’. Which kind of took me to the term called ‘Business Technologist’

Current situation analysis

The pandemic has given renewed urgency and renewed focus to the democratization of digital delivery. It is gaining a lot of momentum among companies that are on their journey of digital evolution. If you are unaware of what the democratization of digital delivery means let me unwrap this for you. It means putting the tools and the responsibilities and the accountability for building digital capabilities in the hands of business technologists, a staff that works in business areas, not in IT departments.

The need for tech work is growing which IT departments can not fulfill by themselves. And it is causing many companies to reconsider how they draw boundaries between what IT departments do and the kind of technology responsibilities that people outside IT have. Critics do consider it as a big modification to the modus operandi of organizations, but it has been highlighted by Gartner that companies that do it well are far more successful in the market than the ones that are not.

Business Technologist vs Shadow IT?

Business technologist refers to employees that create technology and analytics capabilities for work but work in business areas, not in the IT department.

Shadow IT is traditionally used to refer to efforts by business areas to circumvent Its infrastructure and go their own way and put their own emails, and servers. And it’s often very duplicative. Business technologists are inclined towards working on mission-critical things that have high visibility and more often than not, they are collaborating very closely with their IT departments. Gartner reports suggesting that Business technologists view working with IT as highly valuable in usually helping them with innovation, security, and speed. It's not shadowing it's a new way of collaborating with IT.

Gartner says: At least 84% of companies and 59% of government agencies have set up fusion teams, which are multidisciplinary teams that blend technology and other types of domain expertise and are often designed to deliver products rather than projects.

Fusion teams and business technologists

It’s essential to learn about team structures that can bring the best out of business technologists. Usually, business technologists prefer to work in multidisciplinary teams where team members come from different business areas or technical backgrounds, and very few have no experience of working in a team setting. They like to work both collaboratively and iteratively, to deliver value on a continuous basis.

The right team structure can have a positive impact on these three traits of business technologists:

1. Technical dexterity: The ability to apply technical skills independently and use no-code or low-code at an advanced level.
2. Risk ownership: The ability to take responsibility for architectural and security outcomes.
3. Business acumen: The ability to understand the existing scenario and anticipate future business needs, to build bespoke applications.

Among different team structures, multidisciplinary fusion teams enhance the above-mentioned traits in business technologists. As per the Gartner survey, business technologists are 1.9 times more likely to attain high levels of technical dexterity, 3.3 times more likely to assume enterprise risk ownership, and 1.6 times more likely to successfully achieve their outcomes, when they are a part of fusion teams instead of working independently.

How ServiceNow helps business technologists?

ServiceNow app engine Studio offering provides a robust well-governed platform that enables fusion teams to work in a collaborative manner, out of their silos in the most productive manner possible.

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