Thread regarding Follett layoffs

Thanks for the age old discussion of centralization vs decentralization. I agree each has it place. However my point was specifically the lack of understanding and support executive management has for IT. The current IT structure was established over a decade ago by previous management who believed that competition amongst the various groups of development IT was beneficial. Since that structure was created, NO new overall improvements have been made. During that same time FHEG became much more complicated in that tight integration between all IT development teams occurred. "Decentralized" teams working on "centralized" systems do not work well, are risky and as you pointed out, inefficient. Consider the extra work needing to be done when each team has its own software release dates and the overall systems are tightly integrated. Software changes must be done to accept early integration releases, then redone prior to other teams' later release. Another issue is Executive management making decisions to go live, when software is not ready, just obtain their bonuses. Reducing QA time to meet these dates are another example of lack of understanding of the significance of testing. Requirements definition of system changes are done by the business without any consideration for the time it takes to develop the changes, thereby creating risk of developing and testing in too short a time frame. These requirements are defined by director level and above and unfortunately the solution is designed by them also, without a detailed understanding of existing systems. I could go on, but what's the point. No one above manager level understands the necessary methodology to develop systems.