IT Operating Model
How IT is organized, funded and held to account — and who decides what.
The structure, decision rights and funding that decide whether IT can deliver what it is asked for.
Advisory. A design engagement, usually with a transition plan attached.
CIOs, COOs and executives carrying an IT function that is busy and still disappointing people.
Everything escalates, nobody can say who decides, shadow IT is growing, or a reorganization is being planned with no view of the work it has to carry.
The practice
Current operating model
How work actually arrives, who decides, where it queues and where it dies. Usually different in important ways from the org chart.
Decision rights
Who decides, who is consulted, who is simply told — for architecture, spend, priorities and exceptions. Most escalation is an unanswered decision right.
Structure and roles
Functions, teams and the roles that have to exist: business engagement, architecture, delivery, service ownership, vendor management.
Demand intake
One route in, with triage against the portfolio, so requests stop arriving through whoever is nearest.
Funding model
Project funding against product funding, chargeback or showback, and what each one does to behaviour. The funding model is the operating model, whatever the diagram says.
Service ownership
A named owner for each service, with the cost, the contracts and the performance attached to the name.
Sourcing and vendor management
What is done in-house, what partners do, and who holds them to it — including the managed service provider whose contract nobody has read since signing.
Transition plan
A sequence from where you are to where the design says you should be, in steps a team can absorb while still running the business.
Four things decide the behaviour. None of them is the org chart.
A reorganisation that moves boxes without changing these produces the same behaviour with new titles.
The pattern that decides whether the function can deliver what it is asked for — visible in behaviour long before it is visible in structure.
- How work arrives
One intake with triage, or six doors and whoever is nearest.
- Who decides
Architecture, spend, priority and exceptions — written down, or escalated to the same person every time.
- How it is funded
Project funding disperses teams at go-live. Product funding keeps ownership. Both are choices with consequences.
- Who owns the result
A named owner per service, with the cost, the contract and the performance attached to the name.
We map how work actually arrives and who really decides, then design the structure, decision rights, demand intake, funding model and service ownership to match — with a transition plan a team can absorb while still running the business.
The org chart is not the operating model
How work arrives, who decides, how it is funded and who owns the result — that is the operating model. A reorganization that moves boxes without changing those four things produces the same behaviour with new titles.
Decision rights are the cheapest fix available
Most escalation is a decision nobody has been given the authority to make. Writing down who decides architecture, who decides spend under a threshold, who decides priority when two sponsors disagree, and what genuinely has to come to an executive, removes more delay than any restructure.
Funding shapes behaviour more than structure does
Fund by project and you get projects: teams assembled, handed over and dispersed, with ownership evaporating at go-live. Fund by product or service and you get continuity, and a different set of trade-offs. Neither is wrong, but the choice has to be deliberate, because everything downstream follows it.
Shadow IT is feedback
When the business builds its own way around IT, the useful question is what made that faster than asking. Intake that answers quickly, and guardrails that let a team proceed safely, do more than a policy telling people to stop.
What you keep
The code and the data·Your existing relationships·Approval and control·The ability to stop·The off switchWhat that means
IT Strategy
A technology plan tied to what the business is trying to do, and funded.
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Learn more ↗Fractional CIO
Senior technology leadership, in whatever shape the situation needs.
Learn more ↗Start with a 45-minute briefing.
No pitch. We’ll map your situation against what actually works and tell you honestly where to start.