Gartner defines these multidisciplinary squads as “Fusion Teams” – crews who blend the technology’s hands-on know-how and other types of domain expertise, enabling the cooperation between technical and non-technical professionals in the development process of a product.
This new reality mitigates the constant overwhelming ambient in the IT department, fosters internal development of IT solutions instead of relying on third-party providers, and fixes the “broken telephone” between departments (IT does not understand what other business areas really want and other business areas do not know what is possible or not to do by the IT department).
The fact that internal stakeholders outside IT are now able to either develop their own solutions or understand what is possible to create means they will easily be able to bring their knowledge directly to the solutions. In turn, the released products are more aligned with market’s needs and the backlog burden is relieved.
The positive outcomes are clear. According to Gartner’s research on “Fusion Teams: A New Model for Digital Delivery”, 84% of companies and 59% of government entities have set up Fusion Teams. And from the interviews with nearly 1,000 companies who already set up fusion teams, Gartner indicates 43% of the respondents already report outside corporate IT to be closer to the point of value delivery.