User blog:Westermk/Week 2 Reading

 The author indicates that the leaders of the best IT departments ask, “How can we improve?” I think this question is important because it shows that the company is willing to make necessary changing to increase the functionality and efficiency of the IT department. This question also shows that the CIO cares about employee’s feedback about the IT department.



 The four key things that the best IT departments do are that others do not:

 1. Find new ways to improve the IT department.

 2. Maintain dashboards of the entire department to track progress.

 3. Publish the dashboards and metrics for everyone to see.

 4. Recognition that the IT department operates at a fortuitous positions within the cooperate structure.





 I suppose that these are important because the IT department will constantly be in motion with changes because the employees can give their ideas and employees will have a motive to do so. Allowing the employees to give ideas to their management staff makes the employees more valuable to the company and displaying the progress of the IT staff will cause a competition of ideas between the employees. The recognition of the IT is a great way to give positive reinforcement to the IT department.