​A formal and managed process to system alignment will ensure that the business and IT teams remain in lockstep and can agree on the benefits realization expectations. Formally driven “change” also helps to ensure understanding across the organization, the core stakeholders, and the ultimate stakeholders, the customers. All too often IT is viewed as an island and the business carries on running the day to day, with limited understanding of what each of the groups is truly doing.
As a leading practice, each leadership team should set and measure the speed to benefit expectations of each project within an overall program. A “quick win” can turn out to be a stepping stone to short-term benefits realization, however they need to be weighed against the overall vision in order to ensure it is not viewed as a “throw away” exercise from which the business sponsors see little benefit.

If someone told me years ago that I'd be a partner at a leading consulting firm in the Commerce industry, I'd have probably either laughed or stared in disbelief.  From an early age, I fell in love with business and technology, but wanted to be a cog in the wheel, supporting a large corporation, and contributing to top line revenue numbers.  And so I jumped in early to the world of technology in financial and commerce-based systems.  And while the ride was exciting and profitable, I found that, as many have, working models compromised my integrity standards and posed risk to quality delivery of business benefits over speed of implementation.  At times, I heard comments like 'You side with the customer too much', 'Good is good enough', and 'You are too forward thinking and assumptive'. ​