Bimodal IT Organization (Gartner)

What is Bimodal IT?

Gartner Research’s Bimodal IT framework recognizes that traditional development practices are no longer sufficient for organizations with growing enterprise application demand. Instead, the bimodal IT strategy calls for two parallel tracks that support rapid application development for digital innovation priorities, alongside existing application maintenance and operational stabilization projects.

Gartner defines Bimodal IT as "the practice of managing two separate but coherent styles of work: one focused on predictability; the other on exploration. Mode 1 is optimized for areas that are more predictable and well-understood. It focuses on exploiting what is known, while renovating the legacy environment into a state that is fit for a digital world. Mode 2 is exploratory, experimenting to solve new problems and optimized for areas of uncertainty. These initiatives often begin with a hypothesis that is tested and adapted during a process involving short iterations, potentially adopting a minimum viable product (MVP) approach. Both modes are essential to create substantial value and drive significant organizational change, and neither is static. Marrying a more predictable evolution of products and technologies (Mode 1) with the new and innovative (Mode 2) is the essence of an enterprise bimodal capability. Both play an essential role in digital transformation."

Bimodal IT is helping to solve major issues in how companies move forward. Traditionally, there can be a lot of confusion and pressure on IT departments that have to maintain infrastructure and keep operational hardware running, while also trying to get creative and modernize business operations. Bimodal IT helps to better outline the ways that companies can do both of those things at the same time.

What is a Bimodal IT Organization?

A Bimodal IT Organization splits the IT department into two teams, or, as the definition implies, two modes. One focuses on all technology and applications that absolutely need attention. These core systems, legacy applications, and solutions that keep the wheels on absolutely need maintenance. They require a dedicated team, so they should have one.

The second team focuses solely on innovation. What can they build to make the business more efficient and successful? How quickly can they build it? This group is made up of “dreamer” engineers who envision new technology to push their companies forward.

The Bimodal IT Organization - Marathon Runner and Sprinter

According to Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research, “CIOs can’t transform their old IT organization into a digital startup, but they can turn it into a bi-modal IT organization.” Gartner's prediction in 2014 was that 75% of IT Organizations that 75 percent of IT organizations would be bi-modal in some way by 2017. they refer to those in the organization that fall under the traditional and predictable Mode 1 as 'Marathon Runners' and those that fall under the innovative and agile Mode 2 as 'Sprinters'.

source: Gartner

CIOs need to create business operations that are both rock-solid and fluid if they want to succeed in digital business, according to Gartner, Inc. At the same time, the IT organization will need bimodal IT to help CIOs efficiently develop the speed and agility their organization needs to meet digital challenges.

The Bimodal IT Organization Chart - The Division of IT Functions

The figure below shows IT functions that has been divided along the lines of Mode 1 and Mode 2. To help emphasize that the two halves are intended to be separate (as part of the Gartner recommendation) there is some color added to the IT organizational chart. On the left of the IT org chart in purple is the Mode 1 group, and on the right in orange is the Mode 2 group. The colors have no particular special meaning here and are only being used to provide a more visually striking contrast and highlight that the two groups within IT are considered separate and distinct of each other.

source: Lance Eliot

Types of Bimodal IT Organization

In the age of digital business transformation, enterprises seek to increase their agility and speed of IT delivery. To accomplish this, they change their existing control-driven IT organizational structures and processes and establish separate modes for business-oriented and traditional IT delivery (“bimodal IT”). Though the concept of bimodal IT has been discussed in practice, empirical research regarding the approaches employed to implement bimodal IT is scarce.

A research paper by professors and researchers from the University of Hamburg and the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, presents findings from a qualitative-empirical study on the bimodal IT implementation approaches of nine companies. It identifies five different types of bimodal IT in these enterprises and shows that specific mechanisms are applied to enhance the (business) IT alignment in the respective organizational settings of each type. They identify and describe five types of bimodal IT (see table below)

They describe the implementation approach and the alignment mechanisms for each type and show how agile IT is embedded in the IT organization (location) and highlight the role of outsourcing. They further highlight the reach of agile IT in order to indicate which parts of the IT value network operate in this mode, as well as how agile IT is managed and controlled. Finally, they show how the alignments between traditional and agile IT and between (agile) IT and business are achieved. The order in which they describe these five types is based on the extent and degree of changes a traditional IT organization needs to make in order to implement the respective bimodal IT type, beginning with the least intrusive.

source: Bettina Horlach et al.

• Traditional IT with Bimodal Development Processes: The first type of bimodal IT we identified in one organization is characterized by traditional IT, with bimodality limited to the development process, which uses both agile and traditional process-driven waterfall development methodologies. Other phases, such as planning, testing and operations, continue to follow the traditional waterfall approach, with a high level of control in each step. This bimodal development approach applies to the development of new and changes to existing ‘systems of records,’ as well as to the development of customer-centric information systems, such as mobile applications.

Because the development process is embedded in the waterfall process, agility is strongly inhibited when developing customer-centric applications. This problem occurs most frequently when a developed application leads to modifications of or extensions to legacy systems, which usually have releases only once or twice a year. In such an event, a complex change management process is initiated. Thus, the ‘systems of engagement’ can only be released in the same cycles as changes to the ‘systems of record.’

Bimodal IT alignment for this type is usually enabled through projects and through the interaction among people within each project. For example, mobile developers enable knowledge sharing with operations during the handover process. Since development and operations are not co-located in the interviewed company, knowledge sharing is achieved through formal meetings, not continuous exchange. There is no formal mechanism for interaction between projects; instead, this occurs implicitly. Business (i.e. the customer) and IT align primarily through interdisciplinary steering committees for planning and governance. These involve boards for traditional project portfolio management and boards for making decisions on overall standards and architectural aspects, such as programming language and applied technology. At the operational level, business IT alignment mainly takes place between the project manager and the rest of the project team.

• Traditional IT with Agile IT Outsourcing: A second mode of bimodal IT we encountered in two organizations focuses on the traditional capabilities within the IT organization. The agile IT is achieved via third party providers or subsidiaries. This results in a partly outsourced IT organization with a traditionally organized (‘slow’) internal IT and an agile (‘fast’) external IT.

This type has several commonalities with the first type, such as its functional internal traditional IT organization and its waterfall-driven IT delivery with dedicated and traditionally rigid processes concerning planning, operations, and project governance. However, companies of this type have realized that agile development cannot fulfill business needs on its own. This is substantiated by the fact that business units established a parallel IT organization within their units with the help of external providers to solve their problems without involvement of the main IT department due to internal IT’s “many barriers, acceptance, security restrictions, relatively rigid processes and resulting long lifecycle,” as one interviewee stated. To prevent this emergence of shadow IT, this type of IT organization might draw upon one or multiple third party providers or subsidiaries to establish an agile IT mode externally which is internally steered by traditional IT.

The outsourcing of agile IT is primarily intended to overcome the “processual abyss” and slow speed of internal IT. Furthermore, such initiatives can build trust from business that “IT can deliver a solution which still satisfies their needs,” as an interviewee pointed out. Since the companies are operating in rapidly changing areas, time to market is further envisioned, requiring short-run IT capabilities that internal IT cannot currently provide.

To enable internal alignment at a project level, an internal project-steering organization is created that consists of the application’s business owner and the central requirements management function of IT. External project alignment is established mainly through contracts or agreements. However, alignment can also be achieved by seating external staff inhouse to foster knowledge sharing among internal staff due to informal communication.

On the strategic level, there is a clear distinction between business and IT of the duties in this type. The business units are perceived as customers of the IT, resulting in individual and business-exclusive product portfolio planning and budgeting. The responsibilities of the IT department lie in condensing the resulting product portfolios into a single project portfolio. Additionally, a dedicated IT department has the task of ensuring the compliance of individual product portfolios submitted by each business unit with formal and legal requirements. During this process, the people in charge of the product portfolios from business and the IT portfolio department have to collaborate tightly. Over the course of the project, interaction between business and IT occurs within formal steering committees, which make decisions regarding, for example, scope. This applies to both waterfall and agile projects.

See Also

• IT Strategy (Information Technology Strategy)
• Business Strategy
• Strategy
• Business IT Alignment
• Bimodal IT
• IT Governance
• IT Organization (information technology organization)