The role of process improvement in IT departments: experiences and lessons learned

This paper presents the experience and the lessons learned during the process assessment and improvement of the IT department of a large retail company. The characteristics of the company and the IT department are shortly introduced. The business motivations and the main approaches and results of the assessment process are presented and discussed. The assessment led to an improvement project that is currently running. We shortly highlight the improvement process and finally we discuss some aspects that may be useful for assessing and improving similar types of organizations. Among them, the role of global service provider of IT departments, the relevance of communication and knowledge management processes and the need of assessment tailoring and people involvement. We also discuss the role of the ISO 9001-2000 certification approach in the improvement process and the need of a blend of technical and organizational aspects as well as communication and training / mentoring actions.