An internationally oriented tourism company had built up a transnational IT organization with its foreign partners over several years. A matrix organization was created to develop overarching application platforms, define standards and integrate infrastructures.
As a result, this IT organization became decoupled from the domestic company. New solutions became too complex and expensive because they had to be suitable for several companies at the same time. In addition, regular coordination and governance failed because the matrix organization was not close enough to its customers. This had serious consequences. Projects were delayed. The IT organization could no longer keep up with the company's development and employees left. Finally, the transnational matrix was terminated. In this situation, the current interim manager took over the management of the IT organization.
New management positions created and filled at team and department level
In the first few weeks, the IT organization had to be stabilized. To this end, the interim manager designed a new organization and coordinated it with the employees as well as the HR and company management. Several new management positions were created and filled at team and department level. The interim manager also realigned the personnel planning in order to turn around the churn, attract new employees and give the entire division new confidence.
PMO, tool-based service management and IT and project controlling initiated
Parallel to this, it was necessary to bring transparency to projects, prioritize projects and realign them with the company's internal customers. To this end, the interim manager set up regular project governance. He also reorganized the coordination between IT and the corporate divisions. After these short-term measures became effective, he expanded the activities. Among other things, he initiated a project management office (PMO), tool-based service management, IT and project controlling as well as training for project and team leaders. And it was all about the employees: they were invited to regular town halls for dialog, kept up to date in a new blog and celebrated together at events.
After the most important personnel problems had been resolved and the management team had largely been completed, the focus increasingly shifted to strategic IT tasks. These included issues relating to data integration, enterprise architecture management, cloud, agility and ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).
Successful turnaround: IT organization back in calm waters
After around a year, the IT organization was back in calm waters: employee growth, growing employee satisfaction, increased customer satisfaction and projects delivered on time were measurable signs of the successful turnaround. They stand for newfound delivery capability, restored customer proximity and increased motivation.
However, this turnaround is merely what the term implies: a sustainable reversal of the previous dynamic - no less, but also no more. However, the turnaround now provides the basis for formulating and implementing the IT strategy and making the IT organization an enabler and partner for the digitalization of the company.
