IT DEPARTMENT ASSESSMENT 2

IT Department Assessment

The 21 st century has seen information technology increasingly play a central role in
business organizations of different fields. As its importance has risen so has its costs to
companies and complexity increased as well. The management of a business expects the IT
department to develop systems that effectively meet user needs and support the company’s
operations but at a reasonable cost (Verburg et al., 2006). For the chemical manufacturing
company in the case study, the management does not think the IT department is meeting these
goals. For assessing the IT department, here is a look at how the assessment team would look
like.
Composition of the assessment team
The assessment team would have the following members:
Representative of senior management.
Assessment of such kind ought to be customized to the company’s culture and address its
unique needs and position in the market. Moreover, since the final recommendations of the
assessment will need the approval of the company’s top management, involving a senior manager
increases the chances of the recommendations being accepted. The senior manager will make
sure that the company’s vision and long term strategic goals and expectations come to bear on the
final recommendations of the assessment thus making them more acceptable to the company’s
leadership (Madden, 2009).
Representative from current IT department
The main role of this representative will be to help the team in gathering the relevant data
and interpreting it. Such data will include standards and strategies of the IT department, its
personnel, procedures, and processes, and the department’s IT performance data and metrics
(Eason, 2014). Under standards and strategies, the IT representative will provide information on
the department’s governance model, hardware platforms, standards, and strategy (Eason, 2014).
Regarding personnel, procedures, and processes, information provided will include statistics of
workload and qualifications of IT personnel, guidelines and procedures, and management
processes. Lastly, the representative will provide information on compliance reports, cost and
budget reports, and benchmark reports (Eason, 2014). The IT representative will, therefore, be
largely involved in providing the bulk of the information that will be used in the IT assessment.
User representative
This representative will provide expectations of users of the IT network and other
systems. He/she will also provide perspectives of the system’s day-to-day services.
Consultant
An IT consultant with formal qualifications in computer science (preferably having a
Master’s degree) and more than ten years of experience in offering IT consultancy services for
chemical manufacturing companies. Such a qualified and experienced outside entity will help in

IT DEPARTMENT ASSESSMENT 3
providing an objective assessment of the IT department (Madden, 2009). It should be
remembered that part of the assessment would involve benchmarking and review of best
practices in the industry (Madden, 2009). An IT consultant will help in identifying best
organisations to benchmark as well as provide industry’s best practices.
Assessment deliverables
The information obtained through the assessment will be compared with that of other
industries as well as best practices in chemical manufacturing industry. Recommendations will
then be made based on the assessment. During the assessment, the following will be the
deliverables.
 A comparison of the company’s technical infrastructure with the industry’s best
practices.
 Assessment of the cost effectiveness of the company’s IT functions. The
assessment will also provide the technical capabilities of the current IT systems in the
company.
 An evaluation of the leadership of the IT department and effectiveness of business
user-IT leadership working relationship.

IT DEPARTMENT ASSESSMENT 4

References

Eason, K. D. (2014). Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.
Madden, S. (2009). Assessing Your Informational Technology Organization.
Verburg, R., Ortt, J. R., & Dicke, W. M. (Eds.). (2006). Managing technology and innovation: an
introduction. Routledge.