Primary Functions of an IT Department
2009-04-18, 12:00:00

Primary Functions of an IT Department

This entry is an overview of how an IT Department should function within the structure of a business given the Primary Functions. An example of a high level rollout process is also given for the purposes of the discussion...

The first primary function of an Information Technology Department (IT Department) is to understand and translate technology or technical information to other, technical and non-technical users. The second primary function of an IT Department is to understand how a piece of technology or technical information can be beneficial to the business. The third primary function of an IT Department is to assess risk related to technology (i.e.: backups required by the business, how long the business can operate without access to mission critical data).

As a member of an IT Department an IT employee may be partially or fully responsible for one or more of these functions. The first primary function, understanding and translating technology or technical information, can also be called IT operations. The second primary function, understanding how technology or technical information can benefit the business, can also be called innovation or research and development. The third primary function, risk assessment, can also be called disaster recovery or disaster preparedness.

If an IT Department is setup correctly, then all three primary functions are interdependent. Here is how the flow works.

First, new applications or tools (new piece of technology) must first be researched and tested by a smaller group of technical and non-technical employees (researches) to understand how the application or tool will benefit the business.

Second, the same group of researches is responsible for writing documentation for the new piece of technology (i.e.: How it is used by non-technical users, how it is supported by technical users). At the same time, the group of technical employees working on the project should also account for business impact in the case of the new technology failing in some way.

Third, the researches are then responsible for implementing the new technology.

Finally, the original group of researches must assess the post implementation impact on the business. Moreover, did the piece of technology being added improve anything or cause anything else to break or fail? And then answer the question ?Does anything need to be fixed??