Demanding change: how to remain in business despite IT

Uncertainty and flux: this forms the explicit context for many IT writings. The enterprise of IT is encircled by accelerating rates of change: the business world generates an unending flow of urgent demands for new and enhanced IT systems. Meanwhile the technological world generates an unending flow of fascinating new opportunities. Faced with this situation, many IT writings retreat into solutions that aim to improve IT potency by addressing the productivity and quality of the IT process. If we can satisfy business demands faster and more accurately, then perhaps we will catch up. Worthy though these attempts are, they are doomed to fail, because they allow both IT and business to position themselves as passive: IT is merely responding to demands from an insatiable Other, while business is crying out for satisfaction from an unreliable Other. The author argues that we need a notion of IT flexibility that is aligned to a notion of business flexibility. The question of requirements change must be addressed in terms of this alignment. The SCIPIO method has been developed to connect descriptions of desired business change with specifications of IT services that will support these desired business changes