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Where Does IT Fall Within Your Organization?
ros256 writes "I help out a relatively small (100 employees) medical device company that does not have a dedicated IT department. Instead the network admin reports to a manager in the Clinical department. Although this seems unusual to me, the organization isn't really structured at this point to have IT staff report to a department more relevant to the work they do. I've been giving thought as to where within the organization would make more sense. So, I pose this question to the Slashdot community: Where does IT fall within the organizations you work with?"
India
When shit works right - "Why do we need an IT department? They're just an expense!"
When shit breaks - "Why the hell are you using shit that has to be kept together with duct tape and bailing wire???"
the same people that keep the lightbulbs changed, the warehouse shipping and the driveway plowed.
That makes sense, assuming "setting an employee up with a computer" to be comparable to "setting employee up with a desk". I've seen some companies where IT operates under the Finance department. I've never really understood why, except maybe because early computer use in many companies was limited to accounting, and it stuck in Finance for legacy reasons. I've seen other companies where there's a dedicated IT department that traces up to the CIO, and it kind of runs independently.
I think it depends on the company, but a lot of companies miss out by failing to integrate IT very well. They treat the IT support guy like a handy-man who is completely divorced from the company's strategy, and meanwhile the entire business is running on computers. Not that I object to the comparison between support personnel and a handy-man, but if the productivity of your company depends of effective and efficient use of computers, then you might want to involve some people in your strategic decision-making who understand computers really really well. I've seen companies ask employees to spend hours going through a process that a computer could automatically complete in minutes, just because they never bothered to ask the IT guy if there was a better way to go about things.
Sounds like a company fit to be in an Apple commercial. Back in the real world, there are a lot of companies that can't unbox the computer in front of the employee, let them set their own password and then get busily to work. Having worked for a lot of these places, I can say that very little time is spent on OS related tasks (that magically are "better" on a Mac). Niche third party apps (or worse, home grown apps) that are business critical can quickly monopolize time in rollout, maintenance, and user training. Macs are not special when it comes to this; you just happen to work at a place that uses computers casually enough that basic software fits your needs. Good for you.
-or-
When shit works right despite being underfunded: "Why are we paying so much for the IT department? They're just an enormous expense, but there's no benefit because everything is working anyway!"
When shit breaks because of being underfunded, "Why are we paying so much for the IT department? They're just an enormous expense, but there's no benefit because they can't keep anything working!"
That's the way our company works.
They don't want to involve IT because we ask to many hard questions like:
"Who's going to use the system?"
"Do we want to put that promotion on the web site or just in the news paper?"
"Do we want to track our click through rate?"
"Is there power and network available in that spot?" "
You know, stuff that everyone else just doesn't understand.
Users are pretty much self sufficient on Macs. End of story.
Speaking as a man who once had the misfortune of supporting Macs, I can assure you this is not true at all. It may be true for the specific people you have in your organization, but that's about it. Dumb users are dumb and require hand-holding and fixing, no matter what platform you stick them on.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I'd love to see the Macs setting up the redundant T-1s in the comm room, configuring ideal BGP route advertisements, and monitoring the connection.
And how good are Macs at writing custom programs? If you aren't wasting tons of time because routine tasks just aren't optimized as much as they could be on-site, you must not be doing much of anything on those computers.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I have noticed that would you do mention potential problems, people see you as someone that is "not on board" or "not a team player." Sometimes they even go as far as to assume you are out to sabotage their brilliant plan.
When it turns out you were correct, people opinions of you do not change and they either are upset that you predicted the problems and now want to avoid any mention of your existence or blame you for somehow causing the problems that caused their brilliant plan or reform to fail. Those people who had ignored your warnings will go back to the planning board but now without you.
I now smile and try to seem enthusiastic about any plan, no matter how unfeasible or ill-conceived it may be. And I am doing better (professionally) for that attitude.
I have noticed that would you do mention potential problems, people see you as someone that is "not on board" or "not a team player." Sometimes they even go as far as to assume you are out to sabotage their brilliant plan.
When it turns out you were correct, people opinions of you do not change and they either are upset that you predicted the problems and now want to avoid any mention of your existence or blame you for somehow causing the problems that caused their brilliant plan or reform to fail. Those people who had ignored your warnings will go back to the planning board but now without you.
Although there are important questions to be asked in any endeavor, IT or otherwise, it is all about *how* you ask them. This is why often you see professional IT outfits and outsourcing parties hide their nerds behind a layer of business consultants etc.
When someone from "the business" talks to an IT guy, he does not want the hear the word "but". "But" is negative. The trick is to say to the guy "ok, let's look at the what we're going to need to turn your plan into reality". Your very use of the words "potential problems" is going to tick off business people. Your job isn't to look for problems, it's to look for solutions.
When you're talking to the manager that came up with a grand plan, you act with enthusiasm and appear eager to get to work on making his vision a reality. He has minions to help you sort out all the little details, no need to bother him about that.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
If IT is seen as a cost then it will be spun off into a separate IT organization and basically be the same as any other service; water, power, phone, light etc. You'll get a PC and email. The IT org will spend years on each "big project" which will come in late, over budget and will only partially fulfill requirements which changed years ago. Apart from a "Service Desk" and a small core of centralized support staff who spend their time firefighting, users will be left to fend for themselves. This is pretty normal and is cheaper than the alternative.
If IT is seen as a benefit then the IT components will be integrated directly into the rest of the business. You get a PC, email, office automation, custom apps, etc. There will be local support and development staff who can respond quickly to both business needs and problems. This is rare because it's seen as significantly more expensive than the standard model, though it can deliver huge productivity improvements to businesses. However, in this model, IT costs are rather difficult to quantify so I haven't seen evidence of how much more expensive it is.
Now, you pay your money and take your choice. Quality vs cost; the same old question. But if all you buy is McDonalds, quit bitching about getting fat. BTW, if you take a look at the org chart in your company you'll see how things are going. For people in the IT business, and that probably covers just about everyone on /. the latter model is infinitely preferable to the former.
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