Organization by technical specialization

In this type of organization, departments are created according to technology and the skills and activities needed to manage that technology. IT Operations will follow the structure of the Technical and Application Management departments. The implication of this is that IT Operations is geared toward the operational agendas of the Technical and Application Management departments.

This structure can work well, provided that these groups are fully represented in the Service Design, Testing and Improvement processes, which will ensure that their agendas are aligned with the requirements of the business.

This structure also assumes that all Technical and Application Management departments have clearly distinguished between their Management activity and operations activity. It also requires that they have standardized these operational activities so that they can be effectively managed by the IT Operations Manager without undue interference from the Technical and Application Management teams or departments.

An example of an IT Operations organization structure based on technical expertise is given in Figure 6.7

Figure 6.7 IT Operations organized according to technical specialization (sample)

The advantages of this type of organizational structure include the following.

• It is easier to set internal performance objectives since all staff in a single department have a similar set of tasks on a similar technology
• Individual devices, systems or platforms can be managed more effectively since people with the appropriate skills are dedicated to manage these and measured according to their performance
• Managing training programmes is easier since skill sets are clearly defined and separated into specific groups.

The disadvantages of this type of organizational structure include.

• When people are divided into separate departments the priorities of their own group tend to override the priorities of other departments. An example of this is when departments refuse to accept ownership of an incident, each one blaming the other while the business continues to be disrupted.
• Knowledge about the infrastructure and relationships between components is difficult to collect and fragmented. Individual groups tend to collect and maintain only the data that is required to support their own function, and do not give access to it very easily.
• Each technology managed by a group is seen as a separate entity. This becomes a problem on systems that consist of components managed by different teams, e.g. an application, managed by the Application Management team, runs on a server managed by the Server Management department, using a network segment managed by the Local Area Networking department. If a change is made by one team or department without consulting the others, this could be disastrous for the service.
• It is more difficult to understand the impact of a single department’s poor performance on the IT service since there are many different groups contributing to the same service, each with its own set of performance objectives.
• It is more difficult to track overall IT Service performance since each group is being measured on an individual basis.
• Coordinating Change Assessments and Schedules is more difficult since many different departments have to provide input for each change.
• Work requiring knowledge of multiple technologies is difficult since most resources are only trained for and concerned with the management of a single technology. Projects therefore have to include cross-training, which is time-consuming and expensive.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 999