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Aligning IT and business

created by Scott Kim

Businesses today cannot function without information technology. From customer tracking to supply chain monitoring and sales forecasting, information tools facilitate every step of the process. Yet in many companies IT and business are divided, with separate goals and separate ways of working.

Ideally, IT and business should be aligned to work together seamlessly. As Keith Ferrell says in "Common ground," "this partnership has ... become an organic relationship of interdependency, mutual understanding and support."

Each tile below represents either IT or business. Your challenge is to clear the board by picking up pairs of matching tiles that satisfy the following conditions:

1. Each pair must include an IT tile and a business tile. Either tile may come first.
2. The two tiles must align to form a continuous path when placed side by side.
3. You may pick up a tile only if at least one of its long side edges is completely free of adjacent tiles. In the initial board only the four tiles outlined in red may be picked. As tiles are picked, they free up other tiles to be picked, so eventually every tile can be picked.

When you are finished you will have 26 pairs of matching tiles and an empty board. T

Play the game!