Managing IT Organizations: A Complex, Constrained Optimization Problem

The goal of an IT organization is to maximize the multidimensional user-satisfaction function. The constraints are numerous: constantly changing technologies, vendor-required updates and patches that affect users but are nonnegotiable from the vendor perspective, unrealistic increases software costs, reduced budgets, a negative correlation between user satisfaction and IT staff satisfaction about decisions made, user comfort level with changes, user-specific expectations for communication, and more. This session will address the difficulties that IT organizations face and the inexact science of trying to adjust the variables in search of at least one such short-lived and elusive maximum.