Embracing Change from Shadow IT to Collaborative IT Models

Every industrial business in the modern day strives to become technology-driven, for both survival and expansion. With the availability of new generational technology platforms and low-code tooling, technological manifestations are becoming increasingly decentralized. The two emerging forms of business led autonomous technology deployments are Shadow-IT and Business-managed IT. While Shadow-IT is constructed in secret without the knowledge of central IT team, Business-managed IT is a split-governance model built in collaboration with the IT organization. Common governance is required to ensure that IT investments are efficient, secure, and compliant. Despite being aware of Shadow-IT’s limitations, businesses are unable to upgrade them to better models due to a lack of a simple toolkit that can act as a guidelight. This paper’s goal is to present a framework that can fill this gap and illustrate precise steps for a business unit to make a transition to a business-managed IT model suitable to its technological capability. Based on extensive research and case study analysis, the paper captures insights about different forms of autonomous IT investments, proposes a framework to advocate an appropriate business-IT partnership model for a business unit, and finally solicits the opinions of eminent business executives from diverse industries to confirm its applicability. The framework will act as a guide not just for the initial transition, but also evolution of the partnership model as the business’s technological capabilities grow over time.