InformationWeek

July 31, 2000

Printer ready

The Changing Face Of IT

continued...page 3 of 3

sidebar: Haste Makes Waste, But Speed Is Of The Essence In IT

And from our sister publications:

InternetWeek Consider Patents To Keep Leg Up (7/24/00)

InternetWeek IT Prepares For Health-Care Laws (7/10/00)

InternetWeek You Can Strike The Right IT Balance (5/22/00)

Send Us Your Feedback

Some IT professionals even find themselves reporting to two people: an IT manager and a business-unit manager. But dual reporting can be a risky situation. "No one thinks it through," says Meta Group analyst Maria Schafer. "It's difficult to balance the reporting relationship." Managers, for example, could issue contradictory orders, resulting in confusion, slowed project turnaround, and even internecine turf wars.

In most cases where there's dual reporting, there's typically a "dotted-line" manager. The IT worker has primary responsibility to one manager, but has a secondary support role to another department governed by a different manager. At J.D. Edwards & Co., an enterprise software applications vendor, some of the financial analysts share office space with IT employees. Even though the analysts continue to report to finance, they have a dotted-line report to IT, offering on-the-spot financial expertise. "They can provide the information we need in a more timely fashion," says Ken Migaki, VP of IT infrastructure. "They feel like they're part of IT."

Such division of labor raises the question: What is an IT worker? The traditional IT functions-loading software on desktop PCs, administering networks, and developing internal productivity applications-are just a part of the IT equation now. And a technical background is no longer a prerequisite for a job in IT (see story, p. 48).

The push to develop E-business initiatives has led to a dual IT organization in many businesses. Even within a centralized setup such as FedEx's, a two-part IT department remains. At FedEx, some 3,500 IT employees work on developing customer-oriented projects, while the remaining 1,500 are responsible for traditional IT services and infrastructure. At Mitre, Greenwood's virtual organization is considered half of Mitre's IT division. Bob Boonstra, deputy CIO of information systems, infrastructure, and services, manages a group of 300 IT professionals who handle more traditional duties such as maintaining and updating the company's IT infrastructure. Greenwood and Boonstra report to the head CIO at Mitre, Al Grasso.

Another example of the two-part invention that defines IT today can be found at Discovery.com, which operates the Travel Channel, Animal Planet, and The Learning Channel Web sites. Jeff Craig, senior VP for interactive technology and new media development, oversees a group of 70 IT people who were tapped to work exclusively in those areas. "It allowed us to create a separate department," Craig says. "It used to be just a Web site. Now it's a business." Meanwhile, a second IT group, Information Systems and Services, manages traditional IT functions, including enterprise resource planning and systemwide support and maintenance.

But what impact does the two-part IT organization have on those who remain in traditional IT roles? Not always a good one, say IT managers and staffing experts. While IT support is essential, it doesn't carry nearly the cachet as the business-centric IT job.

Grant Russel, a recruiter with MRI Management Recruiters, says the IT department divided along the lines of business and infrastructure functions is an evolution-brought about by E-business-of a split that always existed between infrastructure and applications. But the morale issues that plague modern IT organizations are even more intense. For one, IT professionals working in strategic IT areas often make more money then those who support infrastructure. And when IT pros with 15 to 20 years' experience see people coming in with only three or four years' experience and earning more money, resentment can brew.

Ambitious IT professionals will make an effort to get a spot on the most exciting projects, Russel says, and those who don't have only themselves to blame. Some workers who choose to stay in IT infrastructure will work their way up the career ladder in that part of the organization, he says. Still, J.D. Edwards' Migaki agrees that the potential for resentment between the two sides is strong.

Just as the glass house disappeared, the more recent iteration of the IT organization, the client-server support organization, is rapidly becoming an historical artifact-or at the very least, it's being subsumed under something new and much more exciting. For one thing, companies finally realize that IT managers are important assets when it comes to planning E-business strategies. More than half of companies surveyed by InformationWeek Research include IT executives when planning E-business initiatives. The more technology-intensive the company, the more likely that IT will sit at the head table. At Mitre, for example, the heads of all technology centers-including operations and business strategy-form the I-Team, as it's called: an "innovation team" to advise the CEO on new business and other initiatives.

There's a common denominator in all of this: IT organizations are at the heart of the pace of change that's affecting businesses, and that pace is accelerating at a dizzying speed. Rules and boundaries no longer apply. Companies must be willing to evolve and adapt their IT organizations-or face the danger of falling behind.