IT Services: Costs, Metrics, Benchmarking, and Marketing

8.2. Structuring the Organization

One of the goals in developing the ISD organization was to create opportunities for movement within the organization. We tried not to develop the traditional organizational structure, where division of labor is based on job function. Instead, our goal was to create an organization that had loose boundaries between job functions. We wanted to establish career paths that enabled our employees to grow into new job functions, if they wished, without having to leave the organization.

To aid in our goal of retaining employees, we developed a career path diagram to show people their paths for advancement. A career path diagram (Figure 8-1) shows how we created career advancement within a particular job such as systems ...