Although this strategy often leads to team unity in the short run, it is incredibly destructive in the long run: IT is a team sport. Your wonderful servers don't do much if your network infrastructure isn't available; similarly, great applications are not as great if your authentication infrastructure hasn't been well integrated.
How your IT department is perceived and how it functions as a political entity with the outside world depend upon factors ranging from IT growth patterns to the way you handle individual relationships.
When departments start doing their own thing -- namely, hiring their own IT staff -- a central IT department is in political trouble. Whether we speak to folks in private industry or in the public sector, they seem to relate a common experience: IT is usually the last to know. We've heard of everything from one technician being hired to an entire departmental IT subdivision being formed.
Emotionally, this can be hard to handle. After all, you're IT. By hiring their own IT staff, departments are telling you you're doing a bad job, right? But remember, this isn't about your IT department; it's about coordinating with corporate management and making sure IT's functions are handled in the best possible way. By hiring IT staff, whether temporary or permanent, the department is sending up a pretty clear signal that IT is not being handled in a satisfactory way. You don't want to engage in a turf war; rather, you want to find out what technology needs weren't being addressed and do your best to assist the new staff in addressing them in a way that contributes to the company's profits and customer service. If you make these two items your priorities, rather than concentrating on your own interests, you'll be surprised how much easier -- and less acrimonious -- your political dealings will be.
When you've spent your career deploying users, workstations and routers based on cookie-cutter technology, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that not every department needs the same mold. In fact, maybe some departments aren't good candidates for mass-produced configurations at all. In this case, though perhaps you can't contribute standardization to these departments, you can contribute flexibility -- which may not be in IT's interest but will certainly help you win friends and influence people.
One of the ways to flaunt your flexibility is to provide a department's dedicated support staff an IT support umbrella. While your reaching out to departments that have hired outside help may seem insane, it not only is best for the whole organization in the long term but is also great politics.
If you've ever been the lone IT gunman in an organization, you'll remember what it's like to lack a good technical library or peers to bounce ideas off, much less the proper tools. Sharing these resources with departments that are doing their own thing can cut the tension and improve everybody's IT experience -- which is what you're about when you're central IT. We've spoken to organizations that have invited departments that are doing their own thing to participate in all of the above -- from TechNet subscriptions to weekly status report and meetings. Typically, everybody wins, particularly when there's a dotted-line relationship back to IT (see "Bringing It Back To IT," above).
We've also seen organizations in which IT has kept its ear to the ground, gotten wind of the proposed hires and convinced upper management that though these new folks will do work for the department in question, they should report to and take at least some direction from central IT -- usually in trade for ongoing training, salary and other budget concessions. This either works incredibly well or is an unmitigated nightmare.
Not surprisingly, the thing that differentiates heaven from hell seems to be the prior relationship between IT and the department. An IT department with a strategic business vision does better than an IT department intent on upgrading technology for technology's sake.
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