Project Manager

How should the IT department's role be defined in your company? More importantly, who is your company, how does it operate and what are it's long term goals? Departmental balance and integration, will always be off if the company is facing an identity crisis.

Some IT professionals will tell you to do it for cheap. They'll insist that large budgets are needless and wasteful. They've often got a lot of good suggestions for cost cutting and a laundry list of free alternatives to the more expensive status quo. IT shops that run like this pride themselves on getting the job done at the lowest cost. Are they correct? Can this approach keep companies competitive?

Some IT professionals are bleeding edge advocates. They're the ones rushing around getting quotes for new technologies and developing roll-out and integration plans before the new hardware/software has even hit the shelves. They defy the odds and to keep their departments at the very forefront at all times, and they'll insist that any company that's not currently on the upgrade path will be buried. But can businesses afford the risk and cost?

The rest will insist that the right answer is to use their formulaic, middle-ground blend. But they're all incorrect. Focusing solely on cost and budgetary theory is a failure to grasp the true issue. No budgetary approach will result in a strategic or tactical plan that everyone can follow and find success with. Part of the problem with all three views is that the proponents of each one is missing the point, they're trying to run their IT shop like it's a separate entity.