The SIMA: A practical approach to information technology management

The management of information technology (IT) must be organized efficiently and most of all effectively in order to support the organization's business processes optimally. The IT department must focus more on its customers and the services provided to support their business processes, thus enabling customers to gain competitive advantages from IT. Therefore the IT department should be treated as a separate business unit with its own characteristic services and business processes. The complexity of the IT infrastructure must be reduced by breaking it down into pieces according to the type of function its components perform. Each part must be treated as a separate unit, with services, relations and responsibilities in its own right. All this requires a major reorganization of the IT department. This paper presents the first results in the development of a practical method for organizing the IT management function and for effecting the inevitable organizational changes.