MBA a Route to it Success
For many years, IT departments have operated as a bastion of magic and alchemy. With the right incantation and spells (requirements documents and test cases for example) new and wonderful systems would be developed. With an error or omission, those same incantations and efforts could produce vastly different results. This has not been intentional, but merely the result of two groups speaking different languages and having different expectations.
In some cases the failures have come from the business side, with attempts made to define the problem as merely producing a specified output and telling IT what tools and processes to use to produce that specific output. Other cases have been IT telling the business what information they will get and how it will be presented without understanding the problem to be solved. Sometimes, failures have been a combination of both.
What is needed is a way to let everybody have meaningful input into the development of a system, with the result being a partnership of IT and business. Ideally, the solution will result from the business being able to define the ultimate problems that need to be solved with IT being able to use their knowledge of tools and the development lifecycle to produce a system that solves those problems. Along the way both groups provide into into the processes, controls, checks, and steps required to get there.
For this to happen, there need to be more people that can speak both languages while obtains respect and trust from both groups. This is a difficult task, and anybody who undertakes that role will find it impossible to please everybody all the time, and will need to be as good at politics as they are at understanding the business and how IT works best. An MBA can help significantly with a lot of this.
An MBA is a useful certification because it requires learning at least the basics of how business works. Properly done, it ensures a foundation exists for understanding the intricate details of a real-life business or business unit. It also demonstrates an ability to learn about a wide variety of topics. This ability can earn the first beachead of trust with the IT crowd. Making an effort to learn about what IT can do will broaden that trust and establish goodwill that will be necessary to aligning the efforts of business with the efforts of IT.
At the same time, speaking the same language as the non-IT members of the business will only help an MBA a little bit. It will be necessary to build the trust and goodwill with that group much further. This is because success in IT is going to come down to who can best meet broader goals that require cooperation from both the technical and non-technical team members.
I use team member because that is the critical difference. Until now, most places have viewed IT and non-IT as independent groups, even as different kingdoms of employees. Business groups have sought ways to constrain the IT cost center just as efforts are made to minimize waste in manufacturing. The goal is even regularly stated as keeping IT costs below a specified level. IT groups have sought to prevent interference and meddling from business groups while struggling to maintain some measure of change management.
Both viewpoints miss the idea of synergy. Most MBA programs cover a wide variety of topics and, in a capstone course if not before, force groups with different viewpoints and skillsets to work together to solve problems. This is the greatest benefit of an MBA for obtaining success in IT. Those that truly grasp how to combine these differences to reach a mutual goal and who can scale it up to the much larger IT departments and corporate environments that need the most help will also be the individuals who are the most successful.
In short, an MBA is an excellent - but not only way - to reach IT success. It is a route that has only been taken by a select few exceptional individuals, but it will also prove to be a route than many future success stories will follow as the Information Age continues. The increasing use of technology in everything, leading to a Smarter Planet as IBM is using, will open up the opportunities for those willing to take this route.
