The Role of Program Management in Information Technology Organizations

IT departments go through periodic reorganizations. This is due to a number of factors--a desire to improve service levels or to become more closely aligned with the businesses being served or to reduce costs, or all of the above. The shift from centralized organizational structures to decentralized structures has been going on for years. So has another shift–the one from a technology focus to a service focus. IT departments will of course completely disappear eventually, as the technology becomes completely ubiquitous and, at the same time, invisible. What may be left at that time are service departments designed to support the business initiatives of the organization through program management.

Today the IT department of most established companies spends a great deal of its budget on maintaining  systems that support business operations and fundamental IT infrastructure. These are the applications that run the business and the technology that enables those applications. In most companies it is taken for granted that these capabilities are aligned with and support the business.