Perhaps company size isn't as much of a factor as the role of I.T. within the company. If your business is I.T. or your "product" is created, stored and delivered via computer, you ARE a big company from an I.T perspective. Ideally the technical and operations groups are separate, and report to someone with enough savvy to evaluate the often-conflicting priorities of both areas. The other two scenarios could be great or a disaster depending upon personalities. If the Operations Manager has been a systems programmer during his/her career, having the sys progs report to Ops might work. OTOH if the Ops manager has the technical aptitude of a turnip you'll never get your money's worth out of your tech staff. Conversely, if the Systems Programming manager has no operations backout, you may end up with the latest, greatest everything, using every new feature under the sun whether you needed 'em or not, but the production won't get done because the system's so unstable. Been in all three scenarios over the course of my career, and having both groups report to the next level up is far and away THE best.
Bill Pettit wrote: We have been working with a consultant that has made several organizational change suggestions regarding Information Systems at our company. One of those suggestions is moving our Computer Operations section be part of and managed by the Systems Programming manager. <snip
