ABSTRACT
Although some information technology organizations operate as separate business entities, running on their own profit-and-loss statements, and although a small percentage of companies have outsourced their information technology (IT) operations to third-party service providers, the vast majority of today’s enterprises maintain their own, internal information technology shops. In a world where IT plays an enabling role in almost every aspect of business activity, it should come as no surprise that both the investments and the expectations for the positive impact of information services within these enterprises are on the rise. For IT organizations, the challenge, as always, is how to satisfy the customer, given real-world resource constraints, the actual limitations of available information technologies, and most importantly, the business process and organizational barriers to change and innovation posed by the enterprise itself.
