Abstract
The complexity of business and competitive environment enforces organizations to adopt innovative ways for doing business. This drives a new trend of agile organizations that are adaptable to market and technology changes. As a result, 75% of organizations recognized agility as one of the key drivers for their IT strategies. As organizations start adopting digital transformation initiatives, they recognize the necessity to adapt agility in their IT departments as well. However, moving to an agile organization and an agile IT department is more complex than adapting an agile software. This chapter aims to provide an in-depth explanation of agile IT department specifying its features, roles, and differentiation elements from the traditional IT department. Emerging technologies that are crucial in the movement towards an agile IT department are also discussed with possible change management process to facilitate the transition of the agile IT department into profit center that is contracted to add value for the whole organization while working in a feasible partnership mode with the business.
TopAgile It Department: Concept And Characteristics
This section is intended to discuss the concept of agile IT department and its main characteristics and to explain the differences between agile IT department and the traditional IT department.
Key Terms in this Chapter
IoT: The internet of things (IoT) is a system of interrelated digital devices where these devices have the computing capability to generate, consume and process data with minimal human interaction.
Agile Organization: An organization follows the practices and attributes which allows the organization to be adaptable with any market changes and create customer-driven culture.
Agile IT Department: Is a flexible learning unit which implements agile methodology principles across the entire IT department to deliver IT services and response to the organization’s needs effectively.
Cost Center: Is a unit that generates costs and is responsible only for non-exceeding (or saving) the planned costs.
SOA: Service-oriented architecture (SOA): is an architectural pattern that allows an organization to use software resources more effectively.
Cloud Computing: Is an information technology model where IT services (both hardware and software) are delivered on-demand to consumers over a network in a self-service fashion, independent of device and location.
Profit Center: A profit center is a unit that has both cost and revenue responsibilities and generates revenue more than its expenses.
BigData: Bigdata refers to the large volume of data which is beyond the capability of traditional database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.