Inter-personal relationships is an important key to the success of any IT and business collaborative projects, according to the “Project Management: How IT and Business Relationships Shape Success,” (Levinson). Leaders or people involved in such project should exert conscious effort to manage inter-personal relationships within the group. These relationships would ultimately determine how the project flows and ultimately ends.
Building and maintaining trust between IT and business is one of the most important tasks of the team manager. Trust needs to be strong among the members of the team to allow smoother and faster flow of work and eliminate any blaming that could stall the progress of any process. Trust is actually more important the talents or skills of the team members, or even the sophistication of the technology. After all, issues always arise. People who trust each other can always work together to solve any problems.
Unfortunately, relationship building and sustaining are often overlooked. Many IT persons are heavily focused on tools. People do the work, not the tools. So, conscious effort must be exerted to manage the relationship aspect in an IT-business partnership. In addition, IT people should undergo some training and be certified in the area of relationship management.
Agile software development methods could help in developing trust among people and hasten a projects progress. Every time the business partner sees that the committed work has been fulfilled, the trust becomes stronger thus allowing IT to proceed without much interference.
Works Cited
Levinson, Meredith. “Project Management: How IT and Business Relationships Shape Success.” CIO. 16 Sept 2009. Web. 7 Dec 2012. < >.
