IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

8.2. Players, roles and responsibilities – IT

8.2.1. IT department

An internal service provider who will address the client's need, using its own internal resources, or external resources or a combination. Roles and responsibilities vary across the demand, supply and production phases.

• DEMAND PHASE: See Figure 8.2. An IT client manager or 'account manager' or 'business relationship manager' will be the single point of contact for a department or major BU functional area. His internal client will usually be the 'application manager' (see previous page), with whom he will meet on a regular basis to jointly review demand, not just what's in the pipeline and the status of ongoing work but also what might be coming down the line in the near future.

  The objective of this key role – which would be new in many organizations – is to manage the business relationship in terms of demand, supply, quality of service, finance and accountability for results. Without such a role, IT is essentially a passive order-taker with little added value in terms of helping the business to formulate their ideas – and where appropriate challenge them and propose alternatives – and whose criteria for success remains the sterile conformance to deadlines, budget and spec. One of the main challenges of this new role is for a single person to be able to objectively represent both IT and the business without losing the respect of either group. Like the two-faced Roman god Janus, he has to deal simultaneously with ...