Dive Brief:

• Half of line of business workers are frustrated about IT's ability to quickly deliver on digital projects, according to data from Mulesoft based on surveys of 1,739 middle managers.
• A lack of connectivity between existing IT systems, applications and data hampers the delivery of digital projects, according to one-third of respondents. Challenges in accessing digital skills and overreliance on internal IT teams create additional drag on the deployment of enterprise tech, according to the survey.
• Two-thirds of line of business managers are unsure their company has sufficient skills and technology to keep up with accelerated digital project demand in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dive Insight:

Tension ensued after the pandemic made technology demands rise across organizations. Operations pressed IT for more — from expanded VPN access to new capabilities to uphold ecommerce.

IT not moving fast enough with digital implementations in the perspective of workers in the line of business is a common challenge, according to Marcus Torres, VP of product management, platform business and foundation at ServiceNow.

"Lines of business have to respond to the speed of their business," said Torres. "We know that today's environment is one of agility, and in that agility, not only do you need to move fast but you need to be resilient."

From the CIO's seat, IT teams no longer look like a separate island tending to the needs of an organization. The reality is that the business and tech worlds are inching closer together, with line of business workers increasing their technical chops. The CIO acts as a navigator who is comfortable in both worlds.

There's an evolution happening in the enterprise realm, one that involves "business teams and IT teams fusing together on a permanent basis to deliver more advanced business capabilities," said Irving Tyler, research VP at Gartner.

CIOs must "step up their leadership as they did during COVID[-19]," to ensure that stakeholders across the organizations feel a sense of co-responsibility regarding technology, as well as the technical proficiency of their staff, said Tyler.

Bolstered by platforms with more intuitive IT capabilities that don't require writing code, line of business users are becoming more hands-on in digital, with a majority of respondents involved in identifying, suggesting or creating new ways to enhance internal and external digital service delivery, according to the report.

Low code and other tools aimed at citizen developers are helping to bridge the tech gap, Torres said. Not only do they offload work from IT units and into business, but they create a partnership model that helps IT and business band closer together.

"When you have multiple organizations invested in the same outcome, that's where you get a team culture and an execution model that is invested on both sides, and when you have that, that's when you get resilience with agility," Torres said.