Information technology (IT) supports an entire organization. This means IT is best when it can support the entire organization at once. Unfortunately too many leaders, particularly those at the executive level, want to run their organizations along verticals. These leaders often want to have duplicate teams operating in each vertical so these teams can directly support the needs of the leaders within a given vertical. Splitting IT teams along verticals is a recipe for disaster.
I understand why leaders want to split IT along verticals. Leaders simply do not want to wait to get their stuff.
What happens when you split IT along verticals?
When you split IT along verticals you create an us versus them mentality within IT. Those IT teams are encouraged to please the leaders within their own verticals. The problem comes when leaders, particularly executives, want to implement a large-scale system into a single vertical.
Rarely does a large-scale system impact a single vertical. Data is data, and data is used by everybody. This means the large-scale system will impact teams (IT and non-IT teams alike) in different verticals. Disparate systems will need to be joined, security must be integrated, systems must have continuity plans in place, business processes must be evaluated and updated, systems that support business processes will be impacted, etc.
To get the large-scale implementation done, leadership will need to cannibalize teams across verticals. This creates chaos within the organization. Teams get disrupted as “the best” people get re-appropriated to the new “must have” project. The teams that remain suffer a hit to their productivity as the team members left behind must juggle the loss of teammates and figure out how to continue with work in-flight. Leaders demand that the new initiative (that large-scale system) be successful. Meanwhile, the leaders within the other verticals demand that their pet projects get completed on time and on budget. These demands place additional pressure and constraints on teams across the organization. Employee engagement plummets. Employee satisfaction plummets. Attrition sky rockets.
But I’m not implementing a large-scale system!
That’s fine, but you are still setting your company up for disaster. The leaders in each vertical have their own desires and problems that are unique to their business domains. These leaders seek out new systems to solve their problems and satisfy their desires. Leader in vertical 1 wants system A, and leader in vertical 2 wants system B. That’s fine, but systems are not created equal.
What if system A runs on SQL Server and system B runs on Oracle? The mandates to IT are to implement solutions to solve business problems. The different leaders approve and demand that they each get their new systems. Congratulations, you just created 2 completely different IT organizations that are now independent from one another. You increased the overall risk to your company. Your IT environment just became highly complex and highly expensive. You just lost all synergy among your IT professionals. Eventually you will have a large-scale system you want to implement, and that project will be high risk because of the different systems architectures that exist within your environment. That large-scale system implementation will likely fail, which means you will waste millions of dollars because of your dumb hare-brained idea to split IT along verticals.
And what does IT do in response to the craziness of multiple platforms, databases, and architectures? IT establishes crazy project review procedures. Leaders hate these procedures because these procedures create greater overhead, more red-tape, and higher hurdles to getting systems implemented; the systems that are supposed to solve business problems.
Let IT be IT.
The solution to this problem is quite simple: Let IT be IT. Would a VP of finance allow IT to come in and dictate finance best practices to finance? Of course not! So why should there be an expectation that finance dictate IT best practices to IT?
Leaders need to articulate their problems, needs, and priorities. These priorities need to support the goals of the organization. All leaders need to rally around the company’s goals and not individual pet projects. Allow IT to execute on what’s important (as set by the leaders defining the company’s goals). If you do not respect the domain of IT, then you will simply introduce high risk into your organization. I hope you enjoy watching your company burn to the ground, because that’s exactly what you support when you ignorantly (arrogantly?) split IT along verticals.