Paul M. Ingevaldson is the retired CIO of Ace Hardware with 40 years in IT. He recently wrote an article in Computerworld detailing the qualities of a healthy IT department.
As sad as it is some businesses / executives in the SMB space still view IT as operational overhead. In today’s economic reality, IT has to rise to a strategic level. I’d argue that businesses that do not follow most if not all of these top 10 qualities won’t make it out of this recession!
10 Qualities of a Great IT Shop:
. The CIO reports to the CEO or, at least, the chief operating officer. This is vital to the success of the IT department. It gives the CIO clout and ensures IT’s independence.
2. There is an IT steering committee composed of C-level executives from the business units. The executives make their decisions based on some set of priorities and criteria such as ROI. The committee is necessary to ensure that allocation decisions are made in the interests of the entire company, not of an individual department.
3. The IT shop uses up-to-date software and hardware. It should also have reasonable policies for PC software upgrades and other regular system updates. In addition, the company should be spending an appropriate percentage of corporate revenue on IT. This indicates the company’s level of commitment to IT.
4. There is a high-visibility system security team. Since security is one of the most vulnerable areas of IT, it must be well managed.
5. There is an ongoing disaster recovery process involving users, and a documented recovery plan that is tested regularly. Commitment to security and disaster recovery indicates the importance of IT to senior management.
6. There is an ongoing commitment to training to keep IT staffers up to date. This should include attendance at technology conventions as well as training seminars and industry events. If there is a lack of training and a parallel use of consultants, you know that the focus is not on in-house staff.
7. There is rigid adherence to somesystem development life cycle (SDLC) that is understood by IT and the user community alike. (Knowing how IT works helps users interact with IT more effectively.) Any of several SDLC plans may be used, depending on the type of project, but the process of selecting the approach should be documented. This gives you some insight into the professionalism of the IT organization.
8. There are established technical and managerial career paths that enable workers to remain technical and achieve higher pay and status within the organization. This is the only way to retain top technical people who have no interest in managing others.
9. IT produces, at minimum, a monthly status report that shows progress on all major IT projects. This document should be widely distributed throughout the company. Its existence shows the level of interest of IT within the organization.
10. IT sits at the long-range planning table and participates. If this is lacking, it is a sure sign that IT is looked at as an implementer and not an enabler.
