似乎从一开始，首席信息官们就致力于将IT部门从“接单人”变为“业务合作伙伴”。他们构建了业务关系管理职能，喊出了“我们就是业务”的口号，并搭建了相应的领导力发展课程。
这些努力确实也产生了一些渐进式的积极的影响。跟五年前相比，大多数IT领导团队与业务伙伴的关系变得更加牢固了，但是仍有很长的路要走。“提高IT部门的可信度”继续出现在业务部门给公司的愿望清单的顶部。
要鼓励技术人员能够加深自身对营销、商业运营、供应链和金融的理解，因为技术人员通常来说对于复杂的技术方面会比较精通，但是对于营销、商业运营、供应链和金融的理解还是一个比较缓慢的过程。但是软件最终还是由业务部门使用的，对业务的理解缓慢的步伐还是不够的。
那么首席信息官们是怎么提高IT部门跟业务部门之间的配合度的呢？Illumina公司是运用了Capabilities Management Model。
Carissa Rollins在今年4月成为Illumina的首席信息官，她觉得Capabilities Management Model非常不错。Rollins认为，随着这家市值50亿美元的生物技术公司从研发和制造拓展到临床基因组健康领域，IT在业务增长和患者护理方面发挥着越来越重要的作用。
Rollins说:“传统上，Illumina一直专注于实验室，但我们现在正走出实验室，进入个性化患者护理领域。”“我们正在与医生和投资人合作，研究如何帮助人们了解自己的基因组健康状况。”
IT可以产生商业影响的一个领域是Illumina最近宣布的NovaSeq X系列，这是一套功能强大的测序仪，有望提高基因组测序的现实影响。
Rollins说:“NovaSeq X是一台非常了不起的机器。现在我们需要围绕它提供良好的客户体验，帮助医生和患者了解数据对患者健康的影响。”
一、需要重新关注IT对业务的影响
Illumina从实验室向患者的转变，使得Rollins的IT团队必须更加专注于客户数据和体验，要求IT部门主动成为业务解决方案的共同创造者。
Rollins说:“很多IT部门的人我们都太专注于做业务想让我们做的事情，而没有能够去了解和理解业务。所以当他们说想要什么样的系统时，我们只能按照他们的要求做，而我们没有足够的理由来说我们有一个更好的主意。’”
Rollins认为Capabilities Management Model是必不可少的，它从建立标准和控制影子IT开始。
Rollins说:“在标准和人的发展之间取得适当的平衡很重要。在我们这个复杂的世界里，IT不能控制一切，所以我们需要标准，尤其是在我们受监管的环境中。但与此同时，我们也必须考虑到人的发展，因为随着时代的发展，年轻人他们自己都会使用RPA(机器人过程自动化)和ML(机器学习)。”
RPA虽然给人的发展带来机会，但是如果没有基础的话，就像之前Rollins经历过的这样。“我们的业务部门曾经在IT部门不知情的情况下创建了300多个机器人，当升级系统时，所有的漏洞都被攻破了。”
有了标准和治理之后，下一步就是定义公司的目标功能。公司需要在哪些能力上投入更多的时间和金钱?在客户自助服务中如何确保拥有良好的体验?物联网将如何提高设备制造的效率?
Rollins说:“好消息是大多数行业都有一个标准的Capabilities Map。一旦我们有了这个地图，我们需要与我们的业务伙伴进行交流，以确保我们都同意这些是Illumina的目标能力。这个过程永远不会结束，因为地图一直在演变。”
有一个统一的能力图之后，下一步是评估当前的投资策略如何与之相匹配。Rollins说:“一旦IT部门理解了在每个能力上的投资，他们就会更加关注我们的整体业务战略。IT团队也会开始像业务部门那样来思考，而不仅仅是一个服从命令的人。例如，IT团队开始问我们为什么在运输管理上花这么多钱，而在客户自助服务上花的钱这么少。”
二、如何做到成功交付？
Capabilities Management的下一步是交付。“作为首席信息官，我的工作是为IT团队和我们的业务部门提供一个与我们的业务战略相关的路线图。在这个时候，能力管理方面的角色其实会后退一步，首席技术官的角色就会变得更加重要。”
CTO的角色在市场上有许多不同的定义。但对于Rollins和Illumina来说，CTO是战略路线图的平台的首席架构师和工程师。CTO需要确保平台通过API集成到业务平台和客户平台中。Rollins说，“CTO可以设定标准，而Capability manager知道我们需要交付什么功能。”
一旦你有了 capability model 来定义投资策略，也有了搭建平台的CTO，现在就是建立产品团队来执行capabilities map的时候了。Rollins说:“我们不太建议立即建立很多的capability teams，我是建议是选择几个试点领域，因为capability teams的合作方式与过去的工作方式非常不同。”Illumina公司首席信息官Carissa Rollins：Capabilities Management Model是将Illumina的业务重点从研究和制造扩展到基于临床基因组健康的关键。
让我们以客户自助服务为例。客户自助服务团队的Capability manager可能是来自客户服务组织的非常高级的人员。该人员听取客户的反馈来确定相关的战略图。Capability manager向团队引入一个首席工程师，负责从架构到测试的所有设计。Rollins说:“这些角色不再是分开的，这对IT来说是一个巨大的转变。以前，你有解决方案架构师、开发人员和测试人员。但在Capability Model中，工程师负责所有这些活动，这使他们在交付正确的能力方面负有更大的责任。”
Rollins指出，实现Capability Model的每一步都不是线性的，而是应该并行地运行，并且不是所有的能力都会立即转移到新模型中，比如那些运行在打包软件上的能力。
但无论采用何种方法，首席信息官们转向新模式都很重要。Rollins说，“在Capability Model中，IT不再是仅仅负责在中国交付一个新网站，他们同时也需要负责提供客户体验和围绕网站的销售。首席信息官们无法用传统的IT交付模式建立技术领先的业务，所以IT部门必须要从提供IT技术转向为提供服务能力。”
原文：
Seemingly since the beginning of time, CIOs have been working to change their IT organizations from “order takers” into “business partners.” They have established business relationship management functions, developed “we are the business” rallying cries, and built leadership development programs emphasizing influence, courage, and business acumen.
These efforts have had a positive impact, but an incremental one. Yes, most IT leadership teams have stronger relationships with their business partners than, say, five years ago, but there is still a long way to go. “Raise the credibility of the IT organization” continues to appear at the top of the wish list that our clients give to our firm when we launch a new CIO search.
Encouraging technologists, often introverts who have spent their careers mastering complex skills, to deepen their understanding of marketing, commercial operations, supply chain, and finance is a slow march. But with the movement of software into the heart of most organizations’ products, services, and growth strategies, a slow march is not sufficient.
So, how do CIOs expedite the business partnership skills of their teams?
They adopt what is clearly becoming the gold standard of IT and business team integration: a capabilities (or product) management model.
Carissa Rollins, who became the CIO of Illumina in April of this year, strongly believes in the capabilities management model. With the $5 billion biotech company expanding from R&D and manufacturing into clinical-based genomic health, Rollins sees IT playing an increasingly critical role in business growth and patient care.
“Traditionally, Illumina has focused on the lab, but we are now moving out of the lab and into personalized patient care,” says Rollins. “We are working with physicians and payers on ways to help people understand their genomic health.”
One area where IT can make its business impact felt is around Illumina’s recently announced the NovaSeq X Series, a powerful set of sequencers that promises to advance the real-world impact of genomic sequencing.
“NovaSeq X is an amazing machine,” Rollins says. “Now we need to surround it with a great customer experience that helps providers and patients understand the impact of data on patient health.”
Refocusing IT for business impact
Illumina’s shift from the lab to the patient necessitates Rollins’ IT team to have a more acute focus on customer data and experience. It also requires IT to take initiative to be a co-creator of business solutions.
“In IT, we are too focused on doing what the business wants us to do, so we don’t take the time to invest and learn about the business,” she says. “So, when they tell us what system they want, we don’t have enough knowledge to say, ‘Here is a better idea.’”
Rollins believes a capabilities model is essential, and it starts by establishing standards and reigning in shadow IT.
“It is important to strike the right balance between standards and citizen development,” she says. “In our complex world, IT cannot control everything, but we need standards, especially in our regulated environment. At the same time, we have to allow for citizen development, which will only grow as we hire young tech-savvy people who will work with RPA [robotic process automation] and ML [machine learning] on their own. They won’t wait for IT.”
RPA presents an excellent opportunity for citizen development, but not without the right foundation, as Rollins learned in a previous role.
“Our business partners had created more than 300 bots without IT’s knowledge,” she says. “When we upgraded the system, we broke all of them.”
With standards and governance in place, the next step is defining the company’s target capabilities. On which capabilities does the company need to spend more time and money? On customer self-service to ensure a seamless experience? On IoT to be more efficient in device manufacturing?
“The good news is that most industries have a standard capability map to start with,” says Rollins. “Once we have that map, we need to socialize it with our business partners to make sure we all agree that these are Illumina’s target capabilities. This process never ends. The map is always evolving.”
With an agreed-upon capabilities map in hand, the next step is to assess how the current investment strategy aligns to it. “Once IT understands what we are investing in each capability. They become much more focused on our overall business strategy,” says Rollins. “They start to ask why we are spending so much on transportation management and so little on customer self-service, for example. The IT team starts to think like investors, not order-takers.”
Down to execution
The next chapter in the capabilities story is, of course, delivery. “As CIO, my job is to build a model that that gives IT and our business partners a roadmap that ties into our business strategy,” she says. “At that point, my role in capabilities management recedes, and the CTO position becomes more important.”
The CTO role has many different definitions in the market. Still, for Rollins and Illumina, that person is the lead architect and engineer of the platforms that support the capabilities roadmap. The CTO makes sure the platforms integrate, through APIs, into partner and customer platforms. “The CTO sets the standards for reusable platforms, while the capability manager knows what functions we need to deliver,” says Rollins.
Once you have a capability model that defines your investment strategy, and a CTO to build your platforms. Now it is all about building the product teams to execute the capabilities map. “The temptation is to jump right in and build all of your capability teams at once,” says Rollins. “But my advice is to pick a few pilot areas, because how the capabilities teams will work together is very different from how work was done in the past.”
Let’s take customer self-service.
The capability manager for the customer self-service team would likely be a very senior person from the customer service organization. That person listens to customer feedback to determine a features roadmap with sub-capabilities. The capability manager brings onto the team a lead engineer. Responsible for architecture and design all the way through to testing. “These roles are no longer separate, which is a big shift for IT,” says Rollins. “Before, you had solution architects, developers, and testers. But in the capability model, the engineers are responsible for all those activities. Which gives them greater responsibility for delivering the right capability.”
Rollins points out that each step toward a capability model is not linear. But should be run in parallel, and that not all capabilities, like those running on packaged software, will move into the new model right away.
But regardless of the approach, it is important for CIOs to move to the new model. “In a capability model, IT is no longer accountable just for delivering a new website in China. They are accountable for delivering the customer experience and the sales around that website,” she says. “CIOs cannot build technology-forward businesses with a traditional IT delivery model. We have to shift from delivering IT to delivering capabilities.”
本文由数字化转型网（www.szhzxw.cn）翻译而成，作者：Martha Heller；翻译：数字化转型网宁檬树；翻译审核：数字化转型网默然。
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