In deference to Geoffrey Moore, this isn’t about early adopters, but it is about the ability to adopt. More importantly, it’s about a chasm — a really big one. One much more significant than the reference we’ve been making to ‘barriers’.

Let me first offer thanks to Bill for his reference to the Forrester blog post Web 2.0 Changes The Information Workplace. It spurred a flurry of ideas that grew well beyond posting a comment there.

I’m currently at Gartner’s Web Innovation Summit. And while I am happy to report that Gartner does know a bit more about 2.0 than I might have thought before, I did find that they and Forrester are missing critical issues. I already knew there were gaps — I’ve been very proactive trying to start conversations around the things they’re not talking about. The difference now is that I applied the skills of my craft — experience design — to conversations with attendees. I uncovered new facts that blow the lid off of my former concerns.

The Forrester analyst correctly suggested that 2.0 simplifies the ability to enable Information Workplace strategies (which are equally relevant to the success of Enterprise 2.0). This is conceptually correct but fundamentally flawed. It assumes that three necessary conditions can be met: vision, funding and staffing.

The first is strategic in nature. Most IT groups lack strategic-thinking or strategic-implementing resources. Why? Their funding models. They have operated so long in a ‘response’ mode (project-based funding), they have been ’stupified’ out of believing that they can/should think strategically. Typically, anyone with strategic mindsets have long ago left those environments to capitalize on new ideas in the marketplace.

As conference attendees describe their various challenges, I ask if they are doing basic things that could move them forward. They respond in a way that suggests they do not readily see how such actions would be important or would help their current situation. They cannot make the conceptual leap from the mess they’re in to a way forward.

Most of the recommendations Gartner and Forrester are making are perceived as being too ‘fluffy’ (the specific phrase is often “too conceptual”). IT resources are having problems moving beyond the locked down, concrete world that they are ideally suited to address, to the reality they face.

Strategic thinking, design thinking are inherently ’squishy’. 2.0 is not gaining momentum because it’s the ‘latest’ fad, it’s gaining momentum because of the need to address the complexity of reality. IT is uniquely positioned to help businesses address complexity, by providing the infrastructures to ‘let go’ of structure elsewhere.

Gartner is saying that 2.0 is justifiable because it provides a reality check from the things that 1.0 didn’t address (and thank goodness, they suggest that there is no relative justification for anything 3.0 — in the keynote this morning, “It’s the Web Stupid”).

IT understands technology. The predominant ‘thinking’ model inside of IT (those resources who readily survive) cannot see past their daily challenges. They need specifics — they’re more successful ‘doing’ than ‘thinking’, particularly in a business strategic way. This is not about adding more business analysts, they’re part of the problem too.

But telling IT that they need different resources only adds to their frustration and disillusionment. The possibilities offered to them as to a ‘way forward’ has to be reasonable. It has to consider their current reality: constrained time and resources.

Unless (as has happened in some cases) someone with deep IT experience also has the aptitude to move into a strategic role on the business side to change the investment model in IT, the existing IT resources need ways to sell new ideas to the business. The thinking models most effective for sales and marketing are the least effective for surviving in most IT environments. That means, they likely are challenged thinking this way – to even begin to imagine the possibilities.

This presents an opportunity to suggest things they can do to have more meaningful conversations with the business and begin to bridge the chasm that separates them. They need advice to help them do the following:

• Create  and leverage conceptual artifacts that can ‘ground’ a shared understanding, to provide a context for continuous conversations. Often IT speaks in ways equally ‘fluffy’ from the business perspective. Such artifacts would include, at a minimum, Enterprise Framework components like Subject Areas (data architecture) and Function Areas (the means by which to ground a SOA, and by association a Web Services initiative – critical to the success of 2.0).
• Replace technological terms in business conversations with ‘results’, framed by reference to the Framework artifacts.
• Engage the business to decide, collectively, what their priorities are, relative to the Framework. Today IT is by default managing these priorities, robbing the business of the opportunity to see and resolve the conflicts in a more open, informed way.
• Create a 2.0 culture that exposes the work being done as a total picture (again, leveraging the Framework to communicate). This minimizes the ability for individual groups to ‘pander’ focuses on their initiatives, based solely on their ability to throw money at IT resources. Even where companies have attempted to initiate IT Governance Models to mitigate rogue IT spending, they often prove to be ineffective and inefficient as a ‘gate’ to spending. By nature of sheer numbers alone, such Governance bodies typically only review ‘large’ initiatives. In the new world, ‘small’ is the new black. The collective of the ‘smalls’ today are often larger than the biggest ‘large’ initiative.
• Learn to differentiate between technical architectures and capital “A”, Architecture. Many technical architects do not understand the fundamental principles of architecture. If they did, they would not be able to do their job effectively without all of the other architects who can/should influence the decisions they make: data architects, metadata architects (they are fundamentally different – such resources often come out of graduate programs in Library and Information Science), user experience architects, process architects, function architects (SOA, WOA), etc.
• Question the effectiveness of the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC). It is woefully inadequate to successfully leverage Architecture in a strategic, business-value-adding way. Learn about the well-established Commercial Construction industry. Blueprints go out to bid to ‘trades’. Applications Development is a trade. The SDLC ‘starts’ after a whole series of larger activities have already gone on to identify the effort – including the creation of blueprints and specifications. Requirements are the things that a ‘trade’ recommends back to the General Contractor (in the form of a bid) to suggest what it is they will do to fulfill the blueprints and specifications. The current effort to solicit “requirements” (in nearly every development methodology in practice today) is fundamentally flawed.
• Embrace the reality that the SDLC is meaningless in a 2.0 world. 2.0 development is informed in a wholly different way. It should be informed by Design Research, which in the simplest case is done as illustrated by Microsoft’s Patterns & Practices Group (see related video tours in The 5 Ps of Design & Development). In a larger perspective it is informed by continuous research about the business and its relationship with people and vice versa.

I challenge both Gartner and Forrester to apply some of these recommendations to their own companies and ask this question: Is the research we’re doing and the advice we’re giving grounded in a shared understanding of our customers and the context in which they’d have to apply this advice? Before answering that question, remember that most analyst interactions occur in response to a specific problem, taken out of context from a larger whole. Embrace the whole and see what emerges.