Implementation of business Technology management

Business Technology Management (BTM) is not a methodology but I would say a concept, or eventually the aggregation of several guidelines and techniques. It is also described as a management science which aims to unify business and technology business strategies with the aim of extracting the full potential value of business technology solutions. In a nutshell, it allows you to unify business and technology decision making. Sound familiar?

Pragmatically it corresponds to a group of various services intended to help businesses communities. BTM can include different methods such as IT planning, Project and Portfolio management (e.g. PMI, Prince 2), Balance Scorecards, Business support, Database services, disaster recovery, network management, security, document service, and frameworks. BTM delivers a set of guiding principles known as capabilities and defines the expected characteristics of an organization according to five levels of a maturity mode like CMMi. While these methods/methodologies have recognized strengths, they represent a piecemeal approach. There is a need to integrate these capabilities to achieve that strategic business technology alignment because most of these methods do not really focus on the goals and objectives of an enterprise. Balance Scorecard is a performance measurement methodology, Six Sigma or Lean are quality improvement methodologies mostly used in manufacturing, and so on…

BTM may sound like an evolved IT governance concept, where business and IT are in tune in an effort to support and realise the enterprise strategy. But does it really differ from an Enterprise Architecture which sometimes may also be considered as being the glue between various methods/methodologies?

Some questions may quickly arise…Is BTM just “better IT Governance” or simply a different way of naming an Enterprise Architecture? And does TOGAF® support BTM? BTM like Enterprise Architecture aligns activities which remain pure business and some pure technology, but most activities intertwine business and technology such that they become indistinguishable. It also guides and supports enterprises to these various states.

The precepts of Business Technology Management have been developed and refined by BTM experts working with such think tanks as the BTM Institute and the International Institute of Business Technologies (IIBT).