Managing IT Change—IT Organization

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22255
• Author: Art Worster,Frank Andera,Thomas R. Weirich
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Published date: 01 March 2017

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© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22255

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Managing IT Change—

IT Organization

Art Worster, Thomas R. Weirich, and Frank Andera

For the past

18 months, this

series of articles

has provided exam-

ples of business issues

created by informa-

tion technology (IT)-

driven change. We

have focused on how

the role of manage-

ment accountants is a

critical asset in evalu-

ating and tracking

the financial returns

on these changes.

“Managing IT Strat-

egy—The Business

Leader’s Role in

IT Strategy Devel-

opment” (Wiley,

Journal of Corpo-

rate Accounting and

Finance, Nov/Dec

2016 issue) discussed

the organization of

the IT function when

business processes are

fully integrated. We

divided IT develop-

ment into four seg-

ments, each requiring

varying levels of par-

ticipation by business

leadership.

While there are

numerous purely

technical chal-

lenges that arise, the

approaches to man-

aging these are well

documented in tech-

nical IT journals. One

key subject, however,

that often arises is

that of where to get

the work done—

whether to perform

the work onsite, off-

site but onshore, or

using one of many

offshore options.

These discussions

center around issues

such as cost of labor,

hours of operation,

and others. How-

ever, it is critical to

understand before

making design deci-

sions that there is an

intrinsic work flow

between problem

This article is a continuation of the series focusing

on managing IT change in an organization. As busi-

nesses move from functional logic to integrated

business processes, this series of articles has

discussed the way in which different functions

relate to new processes. Also, we have reviewed

how other factors, such as tools and programs,

used to organize and manage the enterprise, have

a pronounced impact on performance. Further, this

transition must be managed as part of longer-term

continuous improvement programs for the overall

enterprise. In our previous article, we discussed the

role of business leadership in evaluating and defin-

ing IT strategy necessary to support these major

and disruptive changes. One additional aspect of IT

strategy that bears discussion is IT function staff-

ing and where the work will be completed. When

decisions are based on projected cost calculations,

they invariably do not include an end-to-end under-

standing of knowledge transfer. This is a complex

task moving from problem identification to whatever

development organization will do the work and test-

ing, and back. This article starts with a definition of

knowledge transfer among organizational compo-

nents and then discusses the role that each design

component may play in efficiently and accurately

completing the work. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This is the ninth installment in a series of articles that have appeared and will appear in the coming issues of JCAF. Art Worster and

his associates, Thomas R. Weirich and Frank Andera, address matters that arise during and after the implementation of integrated IT

applications in a business.

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