How to Design an IT Department? A Review and Synthesis of Key Characteristics

摘要

The design of an IT department received much attention during the last years. CIOs and IT managers still have a great interest how they can set up their IT department. Previous research discusses various key characteristics or even delivers archetypes of the IT department. However, a synoptic view of the screws CIOs can set, is still missing. Subsequently, the aim of the present paper is to synthesize existing literature in order to gain an overview about the key characteristics of an IT department. To that end, a systematic literature review was conducted. The paper contributes a set of nine characteristics grouped along three dimensions: organizational, technological, and human dimension. The nature of the IT artifacts deployed by the IT department as well as the real net output ratio of the IT function were identified as important characteristics, which were not addressed by existing typologies of IT departments.