An empowered BT model includes the idea that end users will take on some functions that are typically performed within an IT organization. These may include selecting and deploying applications, buying mobile devices, and contracting with services firms.

With factors such as increased availability of cloud applications, more IT-savvy businesspeople, and IT shops buried in maintenance of existing applications, there’s a lot on the side of increasing IT functions outside of IT. However, security and compliance concerns, the need to integrate apps and data, the complexity of these applications, and cost are just some of the constraints that are holding back this approach.

Whether there will be a trend towards functions moving out of the IT organization or the reverse, with IT taking on more control, empowered BT will happen in some organizations. When it does, there are things that CIOs can do to exploit this and minimize potential damage:

• Shift senior IT people from “doing” to consulting and overseeing. Architects, for example, spend a significant amount of their time on projects (doing). Some of their time needs to be freed up to provide advice to businesspeople on how to make these functions scalable, secure, and integrated where necessary. Similarly, vendor managers need time to help businesspeople in the selection process for vendors.
• Select for and build up negotiations skills. The leader of apps that speaks in technical terms, the security expert who generates every possible scenario as an argument for not doing something, and the architect who hoards information while making pronouncements on what the business should and should not do are working against you in an empowered BT world. With technically sophisticated end users and tools that can quickly build functionality, business requests leading to IT responses now become negotiations.

Are you implementing or considering technologies, such as Social Computing and Cloud-based platforms?  Is IT positioned to exploit these technologies?

by Marc Cecere

Process based IT organizations have become the rage. These are IT shops that group people around the processes they support, such as software distribution or requirements definition, or by business processes such as claims management. In contrast, traditional shops group people by technologies (e.g. mainframe, desktop), internal customers (e.g. wealth management, retail banking), or geographies (e.g. France, Asia).

There are two types of process based organizations – IT and business. IT process organizations typically follow ITIL for infrastructure and a software lifecycle for applications. Using ITIL, they form groups around process associated with problem management, storage, or configuration management. For applications groups, they may have people dedicated to requirements development, coding or testing. Business process based IT shops are less prevalent but may include IT associated with claims processing in an insurance company or collections in a credit card company.