Assessing Your IT Organization

The structure, processes, and culture of an IT organization can be barriers to success; therefore, CIOs should periodically assess their IT shops and make improvements. This report uses the lessons learned from more than 200 Forrester engagements to describe an effective assessment methodology. From our experience, we've found that the scope of these assessments should include how IT is organized as well as the state of processes, company direction, culture, and other factors. Furthermore, because organizational assessments can be threatening to staff, they must be run quickly, with tightly controlled communication and the participation of senior IT and business people.