By Hank Marquis

Understanding IT Silos

Image Credit: pexels.com/@laura-c-1934069

“Break down the silos!” is one of the most overused slogans in IT. Silos are not the enemy. In fact, they’re essential. What fails isn’t the silo — it’s the experience between them.

Silos exist because specialization exists. The more complex the work, the more you need groups of people who go deep — engineers, analysts, security teams, finance teams, compliance teams. Every industry depends on silos. We simply don’t call them that when we like them. We call them departments, practices, domains, or specialties.

IT is no different. It’s a silo of silos. And that’s a good thing. You cannot deliver modern digital services without specialization, repeatable processes, and deep expertise. The problem arises when those specialized groups have no shared understanding of the experience they are collectively creating.

That’s the real “silo effect.” Not the presence of silos — the absence of communication and coordination between them. Without leadership connecting the parts, IT turns into a tower of Babel: different vocabularies, different priorities, different interpretations of “done,” and no unified view of what employees or customers actually expect.

The irony is that silos work beautifully when the expectations across them are aligned. Sales, Operations, Support, and IT each know what they must deliver, and how it affects everyone else. When those expectations diverge, experience breaks down — and no amount of tearing down silos will fix that gap.

In Completely Satisfied, this is simply Gap 1 and Gap 4 showing up in organizational form: leaders misjudge what people expect, and teams communicate poorly about what will be delivered. The friction people blame on “silos” is usually an expectations–perceptions mismatch spread across multiple groups.

This is also where Hailee’s workgroup digital twin becomes valuable. It doesn’t flatten silos — it clarifies the expectations each silo depends on. Hailee shows what each group believes should happen, what people actually perceive, and where handoffs between silos create hidden gaps. Instead of blaming structure, you can see the real breakdown: misaligned expectations, unclear responsibilities, or missing communication flows.

When leaders have that clarity, silos stop feeling like barriers. They become coordinated specialties working toward the same experience. Without it, even the best teams talk past each other, and “breaking down silos” becomes a distraction that never solves the underlying problem.

Silos are permanent. They’re necessary. They’re good. The work is not to destroy them but to lead across them — to align expectations, communicate honestly, and make sure each silo understands its role in the overall experience. That’s what resolves the silo effect, and that’s where real progress begins.

Please comment or reach out and let me know what you think, I'd love to talk with you!

Best,
Hank

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