How IT works in corporations: line org structure vs. matrix

Corporate IT is a complicated mechanism which is natural considering a long list of various business functions it should provide automation and optimization to and how adaptive it should stay to be able to compete in the world of zero-coding and cloud technologies (I wrote about “Shadow IT” problem earlier).

For a person who’s new to this environment it may seem a bit as the mad tea party. All organizational pieces are constantly moving, new bosses come, departments are reorganized, objectives are changed etc. I saw IT function in many corporations and, I must confess, this tendency was presented in most of the cases.

On top of it, IT becomes more and more matrix organized which changing every day routine and perception of environment for the people who work there. But let’s make a step behind and say what is matrix organization structure and what other types or org structure there may be?..

Well, I would say in reality there are 3 different configurations:

• pure line structure
• pure matrix structure
• mixture of both

Line structure is a classical one: you have your manager, he\she does have own boss etc. All team is divided by those subordination chains, something like this: