My Company is a retail seller doing business via mail, store and web with over 1000 employees. We have an IT department of close to 50 people. These include developers, Project Managers, Team leads, Business analyst, QA testers and DBAs.
Do to the fast expansion of the company the IT has a hard time accommodating all the companies needs and project in a what management thinks as a reasonable time span. I am sure this is normal in all fast growing companies. Mostly this comes from the fact that the management does not appreciate the IT required processes that need to be done for request and projects to be executed.
Here is the issue that bothers me. Recently the accounting department started taking major steps to have their request processed faster. They have hired there own programmer(s) that will have access to our database and eventually to our code. They will be able to produce for them there needs without following any ?IT red tape process? as they would call it. This was done of course with management?s approval and with the agreement of top notch consultants.
My concern is as follows. One, due to the lack of experience (they are experienced in accounting not in IT) they may (will) mess up a lot. Second how can IT from now on take full responsibility for the company?s applications when others out of their control have also access to them? I can not under stand how the company would take the risk to let another department to have access and control over applications. I surely don?t understand how top notch consultants would agree to this.
I would of suggested that rather then the a department hiring their own programmers. We should set up a hotline to IT, were one or two programmers are fully designated to that department. Of course it still won?t be fast enough for them because these designated programmers will have to follow the normal IT process. But at least it won?t mean having the responsibility of our application managed by other departments.
Comments, suggestion, criticism and ideas or informing us of similar situation are welcome.