They said, 'We want you to be faster. Gearing up Ford's new IT organization structure represents a major break from the past. Largely under the watch of former CIO Jim Yost and lieutenants like Surdu, IT groups were split away from the groups to which they'd been dedicated. The centers communicate with the business units on requirements and other issues through a new go-between division called the Process and Technology Group. Each center works like a business.
Business units ask the centers to bid on a project.
Center and business managers agree on a price and deliverables. Center managers like Caulfield, who runs the Accelerated Solution Center, which is focused on application development, and Phillips, who runs the Application Management Center, which is focused on maintenance, are responsible for showing a profit. Since the centers do only the work that business units are willing to pay for, there's less wasted effort. Before, that wasn't there. Centralizing software resources and organizing them around specific competencies has also helped best practices take hold, Ford IT officials say.