Shake IT up

New jobs emerge as IT takes on a more strategic role.

By Sandra Gittlen
Network World, 01/31/05

Whether it's taking the lead in regulatory compliance, becoming more involved with business units or rolling out key technologies like VoIP, IT is taking on a higher-profile in most companies.

And the IT organization is evolving to reflect this new reality; restructuring is occurring, and new positions are being created.

"The big monolithic shared service organization is dead," says Trevor Gee, principal at Deloitte Consulting in New York. "The new trend is to align IT teams with a company's businesses so they can make smarter decisions."

Under Gee's scenario, planning, analysis and design, application development, maintenance, technical support, outsourcing and desktop infrastructure might fall under an individual line of business.

On the other hand, core infrastructure, such as networks and data centers, security and controls, core vendor management, and company-wide infrastructure standards would all remain centralized.

Olin College in Needham, Mass., is an example of an IT department evolving to take on a more strategic role. In 2002, when the school was founded, CIO Joanne Kossuth divided her IT department into two main groups:

Network and technical services, which includes the help desk and operating system support.

IT, which focuses on applications development and ERP systems.

Then she created the position of customer service manager to work on improving relationships with the college's students, faculty and staff.

Kossuth rolled out a VoIP system and employs Web services so that her staff doesn't have to waste time on "mundane tasks" such as adds, moves and changes. She uses automation tools to add and remove servers as needed. "It's no longer, 'is my server up and running,' now the focus is on, 'do my clients have access and are they up and running,' " she says.

Kossuth says her IT organization is set up to take on a leadership role at the college. In the past, she says, "IT was seen as reactive. People would hand you the software and say, 'Install it.' ''

Today, she encourages her team to be proactive. "We do our homework, we monitor networks, we are involved in all the decisions," she says. "We've matured as a profession."

One side benefit to deploying VoIP has been the ability to apply the customer service skills of former telecom managers. Kossuth says they are great at explaining feature sets of the VoIP system to users, spending time helping problem users come to a resolution and updating help desk manuals.

Kossuth also requires her team to hone their presentation, interpersonal and management skills. "It's not just about knowing the latest programs. You have to understand the business and its needs," Kossuth says.

New jobs emerge

As IT aligns more with business, project management skills become vital.

Rebecca Segal, vice president of Worldwide Services Research at IDC, says, "IT is no longer just a support function. It's about, 'Can you understand the technology and help people use it?' Companies want people [in IT] who are very interested in helping the company grow and be more profitable."

She says with the uptick in offshoring, having business skills, specifically project management, will be critical.

Johna Till Johnson, founder of Nemertes Research and a Network World columnist, agrees. "The biggest trend in IT is that there's much more of an emphasis on project management and delivering services than on understanding and rolling out technology. People need to better understand the lines of business, understand customers, better manage suppliers. These are all business functions."

For this reason, Johnson says she's seeing the emergence of a new position for IT - the project management officer (PMO). Johnson says the CTO of an organization focuses on new technology, and the PMO figures out how to integrate that technology into the organization. The PMO also could provide a home for compliance and regulatory oversight, a burden that weighs heavy on most IT organizations.

"They will need to know about process and people management," she says. "These aren't skills your IT manager has had traditionally.

Bob Muckenhoupt, an IT industry veteran, is seeing this trend arise firsthand. His company's Project Management Office, which reports to a level below the CIO, has gained prominence in the organization over the past year. "It's being strengthened; it's enforcing new processes," he says. One goal of the PMO is to adhere to company and regulatory standards.

Project managers, he says, are responsible for ensuring that the technology side of mergers and acquisitions goes smoothly and that all other changes or enhancements to corporate systems are carried out according to company specifications.

"Our job is to make sure that if an audit team came in, they would see we've fulfilled the mandates of the corporation and that we are compliant worldwide," he says.

Muckenhoupt leads virtual teams of business analysts, systems analysts, developers, technical specifications experts, integrated systems professionals and implementation gurus to carry out each project. He acts as a liaison between the team and the business unit. It's his job to communicate the needs of the business unit and make sure they are carried out.

"Back in the day, we didn't need project managers for anything," says Tom Gonzales, senior network administrator at Colorado State Employees Credit Union in Denver. "Now we can't do anything without them."

But instead of assigning a specific project management officer, his entire IT team went through project management training. Gonzales says this has been critical as the company has outsourced some applications, and his whole group oversees those contracts.

James Tate, associate director of Utilities and Telecommunications at Presidio Trust in San Francisco, also requires his team to seek project management skills. "There is a need for project management at every level," he says. "It's the only way of organizing and controlling IT projects." Otherwise, he says objectives aren't met and other people can have too much influence over the success of an initiative.

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