IT Organization Management: Should you Centralize?

Centralization will work better in companies that are willing to ride the roller coaster of change.

If your company operates in several countries and time zones, you might be better off logis-tically having regional centers with their own IT organizations.

If you are in a small company, centralization?particularly skills-based?will be a waste of time and money if there aren’t enough projects to keep workers in all the skill groups occupied.

Ready to centralize?

Take the following advice:

Involve your IT employees in the planning process. “If you start reorganizing teams without their input, you’ll have a huge change-management issue,” says Lyn McDermid, CIO and senior VP of IT at Dominion.

Reward employees who adapt to the new structure. “If someone’s willing to develop a new skill or try out a new area, we encourage that,” McDermid says.

Be patient. “Trying to speed up the process will only cause missteps,” says Limited Technology Services CIO Jon Ricker. “It takes years to get it right.”