Why are people saying the IT department is dead?


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CIO Strategic Advisor in Services (non-Government), 2 - 10 employees
The problem is that there are many people leading IT organizations that have no business doing so in today’s world. We have folks who were directors of IT, or VPs of IT, and got a promotion because they were doing a great job supporting the printers and projectors. The next promotion happens to be CIO, but they're not living and breathing the CIO role. That starts to create an organization that is not what most companies need today. And then when you look at the lines of business, they see IT as the people they call when the Internet's down or they need a new laptop or something. IT becomes some transactional requirement.

There are also examples of this in cybersecurity: you have an employee whose boss is breathing down their neck and they have to get this document transferred. The VPN isn't working, so they're sending it to their personal Gmail account because they don't have access to their own work email. They are not purposefully trying to circumvent security and data protection within their organization, or be malicious in their actions; they just have to get work done. They're not getting the support they need and they can't wait.
Advisor | Investor | Former CIO in Services (non-Government), Self-employed
The early signals are there. We are seeing IT organizations being dismantled because of SaaS — sales is pulling IT into operations and we're seeing the same thing happening in marketing. Marketing has traditionally done its own thing off to the side because there's so much tech. And now finance has their own FinTech apps, sales apps and marketing apps. The thought is that at some point in time, IT will morph into something that deals with aspects like data governance. That’s because the definition of a customer gets completely screwed up when it is absorbed into these unique BUs.
Director of Enterprise Technology Advisory in Software, 10,001+ employees
Can you provide some links to articles or such that is claiming IT departments are dead? I would like to read more on the topic.

I think IT dept are not dead, but are evolving, much like they have since they have been established.
1 Reply
Director of IT in Software, 201 - 500 employees

Agree with you that the IT departments are changing and evolving. I am not the poster of the original question, but here is a link to a recent article on this topic https://www.wsj.com/articles/get-rid-of-the-it-department-11637605133

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Other (please share below)1%


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Without a doubt - Technical Debt! It's a ball and chain that creates an ever increasing drag on any organization, stifles innovation, and prevents transformation.
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