Every business leader today is looking for speed and agility when developing new products, processes and services. By leading with data, gaining customer loyalty and balancing development and operational costs, companies can achieve a competitive edge and remain strong through disruptive times.
Organisations are going through a significant cultural transformation as they need to become more agile in order to fully utilise the innovation potential created by digitalisation. The task is not easy as utilising existing systems, processes and ways of working are still valid and need to co-exist together with new digital solutions.
The Business Technology Standard (or BT Standard) is an open-source management framework to plan, build and run information technology in today’s technology-driven business world. It has been constantly developed and renewed during the past 10 years with global companies and public organisations. It is recognised today as one of the leading best practices and used in hundreds of globally operating companies and public organisations, especially in Nordic countries.
This fourth edition has been completely rewritten and upgraded, and the scope of technology management has been extended from information technology to business technology.
Figure 1.0.1 Business Technology Standard development stages
Business technology covers the use of information technology anywhere in business; in the digital frontline and technology backbone. It includes all key aspects of modern information technology management ranging from digital and product development, to industrial internet and IT. The Business Technology Standard provides a unified management model overlaying different technology management areas. It utilises specific management models such as SAFe® and DevOps for digital development and ITIL and IT4IT for service management in new and innovative ways.
The Business Technology Standard has been developed by the Business Technology Forum, a community of forerunner companies and organisations collaborating based on a platform economy model where every company can benefit from each other’s development input and efforts.
The Business Technology Standard is written in everyday language and its audience includes all business and technology leaders and experts who want to understand how to better manage the company’s technology assets and potential.
We at Business Technology Forum believe that the Business Technology Standard can significantly improve every company’s and organisation’s opportunities to make the most out of digital innovations. By using it as a company-wide technology management guidebook, it will give a unified understanding and a common language to everyone in the organisation, thus facilitating the company to create more value for customers and owners with technology.
Juha Huovinen
Chairman of the Board
Business Technology Forum
Katri Kolesnik
President, Business Technology Forum
Business Technology Standard Publication
The Business Technology Standard framework, which is the foundation for the BT Standard, is published on the website managebt.org. In addition to that, there are guidebooks which provide more information to support the implementation of the certain subject areas. The guidebooks are made available through adequate competence gained through certifications. Further information on training and certifications is available at managebt.org.
Editorial Team
Juha Huovinen (Editor in Chief), Katri Kolesnik (Managing Editor), Elena Van Leemput (Product Manager), Tobias Eckstein (Sofigate), Nick Russel (Xonetic), Salla Maijala (Sofigate), Timo Savolainen (Sofigate), Pia Pitkänen (Kaski Agency)
Thank you to the following development partners for comments and validation:
King’s College London and Aalto university
