To Centralize or Decentralize IT – That Was The Question…
questionmark1What are the key issues in thinking through the
perennial ‘centralize vs. decentralize IT’ question?  This post
was triggered by a question I received from a CIO over the
holidays (yes, CIOs and management consultants don’t take
holidays!)  He was trying to deal with a number of departments
which insisted on having their own IT departments, with no
accountability or responsibility to anything other than
themselves.  (such departments are often referred to as “Shadow
IT.”)  Sometimes these departments were interested in systems
that were standalone and had little external impact, but more
often these systems were interfaced, and the data and processes
do impact other systems outside the department.  There are a
number of issues behind this, but the key variable is business-
IT maturity.  At low maturity, IT tends to be highly
decentralized.  This may appear to provide a responsive and
‘customer intimate’ IT capability, but the reality is it