Organizing a Web Technology Department
There are many good ways to organize your technology department. This article presents one of them. It is written for someone in a CTO, CIO, VP Technology or a consultant role looking for suggestions on organizing or reorganizing your Web technology department. It is best suited for you if your organization has the following characteristics:
- You manage software engineering, implementation and technology operations for 3 or more Web sites.
- Yours is a medium to large size organization with somewhere between 20 to 150 technology staff.
- Internal corporate IT functions such as desktop support, telecommunications services and internal business systems are beyond the scope of this article.
The Venn diagram below presents one model of organizing your department into 3 sub-departments.
Web Technology Department Organization Venn Diagram Illustrating Purposeful Overlap Among Sub-Departments
Many CTOs organize their technology departments as 2 sub-departments: Software Engineering and Technology Operations. Software engineering is the function that is responsible for developing and/or implementing Web application software. Technology Operations is responsible for running, maintaining and supporting the Web applications.
If you operate 1 or 2 Web sites, having these 2 sub-departments is a good approach. For 3 or more Web sites, organizing Software Engineering into Site Engineering and Platform Engineering has some benefits.
Site Engineering is focused on working on the Web sites’ direct projects. Its work includes
- Small and large projects for adding or changing functionality on the Web sites
- Bug fixes on the Web site applications
Platform Engineering is typically smaller than the other two organizations and typically includes functions like:
- Architecture across sites
- Shared applications across sites
- Common libraries across sites
- Research & Development (R&D)
Technology Operations includes functions such as:
- Systems & Applications Administration
- Infrastructure Management
- 24×7 Tech Support
- Builds & Configuration
- Release Management
- Testing & Quality Assurance (QA) *
- Technical Analysis
- Technical Project Management
- Budget Management
* Note: QA can also be a completely independent department or part of another department outside technology.
These three departments have purposeful overlap of responsibilities as illustrated in the Venn diagram above. That helps minimize the chances of the departments becoming silos with walls between them. For success, it is important that your entire department functions as one integrated unit. Some shared goals & responsibilities are required for mutual success.
To make this work, you need 3 directors who head up these departments who work well together, collaborate often and are not sensitive about their turf. They should know that a successful technology manager is not an individual-only contributor, but a great team player with peers. They should have strong goodwill among each other and welcome each other to work directly with their teams. Such a collaborative team is essential.
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