IT organization design and claims that structure is often the root cause of common information systems failings.
For example, a lack of customer focus, poor team work, or a disjointed technical architecture. This is not that surprising. Many organisations formed their information management departments during the 1960s and 1970s when computing or data processing, office automation and communication technologies were disparate and in their infancy.
With IT, which has rapidly increasing variety, these areas now converge and encompass the whole business. Yet IT organization design has not changed a great deal in years with most structures evolving over time to accommodate new technologies, projects, and services.
We have seen centralization, decentralization and re-centralization, and the addition of new functions to support new technologies. Whilst tinkering at the edges has some benefits these are usually short lived and do not address the underlying problem with many organizational structures.
Structural issues often point misleadingly to people, process, and culture.