It’s said often enough that it has become a bit of a catch-phrase but technology development/implementation is different. You cannot simply take someone who understands an operational process and have them run a technology implementation project – let alone lead a development effort. Technology has certain requirements and needs that you have to really understand at the start of the effort.
There’s a reason that a good Product Managers make good money. Being able to talk to both the technology side and the operations side is a very, very, very difficult skill. Not everyone can do it and even those that can do it may not have the organizational skills to pull it off successfully.
If you have a technologist running an implementation project, you typically end up missing the operational nuances that are necessary for the business-as-usual operations. They either end up including too much, not enough, or the wrong things entirely because they don’t understand the interplay between the people, systems, and processes.
If you have an operational expert running an implementation project, you typically end up delaying the technology implementation because the hand-off of requirements is imprecise or unclear. Someone who understands a process intuitively often has difficulty explaining the steps in a way that can be implemented in a system.
Bridging the gap between this either requires someone that can live in both worlds or a strong project management approach that connects owners from both sides with clear inter-operational goals. Technology is hard.