1 IS/IT Organizational Structure

2 IS/IT Org Structure: Why should you care? Your ability to make a meaningful contribution (and/or be successful) at work depends, at least somewhat, your understanding how your company is organized and where you fit in. More often than one would like to think, problems encountered on the job result from dysfunctional organizational structures. Being able to diagnose what is going wrong and why, may help you work around the problems. Yeah, you may also get to build an organization, some day.

3 IS/IT Org Structure: Three levels to consider Strategic or High-level, organizational processes. Who owns and pays for infrastructure and business applications. Who is responsible for the Vision thing, strategic alignment, etc? (Big issue in big organizations) Organization of macro IT processes in relation to one another. How organized specifically to support day-to-day IT operations, tactical planning, and infrastructure and applications development. Internal organization of IT processes, e.g., help desk, configuration mgmt, production operations

4 IS/IT Organizations: Traditional Debate Centralized versus decentralized mgmt Virtual Truisms IS folks don’t really like being told what to do IS folks do like telling people what to do Pendulum swings (who screwed up most & last) More recently, hybrid (federal models emerged) Recent article, indicates perhaps debate much to do about nothing. Study found examples of all types of structures being used successfully Beach’s View: If folks don’t know what they need to do, no (re-organization will help. If folks know what they need to do, they can make any organization work.

5 None-the-less, some orgs work better than others, so… Macro-organization In some orgs it is possible, even desirable, to organize different processes in different ways, i.e., some centrally managed, some distributed. In some orgs, it is possible, even desirable, to treat different sub-orgs differently. What are these macro-processes or organizational building blocks?

6 Macro-processes (Agawal & Sambamurthy 2002) Foundation Processes Infrastructure Mgmt HR Mgmt Relationship Mgmt Primary Processes Value Delivery Solution Delivery Services Mgmt Secondary Processes Strategic Planning Financial Mgmt

7 IT Organizational Models or Archetypes for macro-processes (Agawal & Sambamurthy 2002) Partnership Model: IT and Business Mgrs collaborate in development of strategic IT initiatives; IT execs are business partners Platform Model: IT provides IT platform (infrastructure), business execs responsible for IT innovation Scalable Model: Flexible IT resources (read as extensive use of outsourcing) recommended primarily for cyclical businesses

8 Internal Organization of Macro- processes Kern, et al provide more detail specifically with respect to Infrastructure Mgmt, i.e., provide recommendations on how to organize to perform the infrastructure mgmt function And, minimally discuss some internal organizational issues with respect to performance to specific functions, e.g. three layer support structure

9 IS/IT Organization: Implications for you Understanding the organization helps you: Understand your role in the IT and broader organization Diagnose some types of problems that may impact your or your group’s performance