Every January, we're treated to a plethora of surveys about IT executive priorities for the next year. From year to year, the top one or two items seem to change, but virtually everything below that level stays the same. Beyond the current hot topics, the priorities and problems of IT departments tend to be relatively stable.

One of the perennially favorite issues on these surveys is the alignment between business and technology. It's one of those things we always talk about but rarely succeed at improving. That's not because we're bad people with ill intentions, but because it's very difficult to actually figure out how to fix this persistent problem.

Most attempts to improve alignment involve changing project processes and adding interviews, documentation and meetings in an attempt to coerce people to agree. Generally, this seems to translate into the practice of holding a project hostage in exchange for complete agreement on every detail of its requirements.