This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Provides an overview of the future role of the IT organization, examining the business and technological changes that effect change in many IT units. The four major process changes in the way firms operate all have a major impact on the IT unit: reengineering operational processes, reengineering support processes, rethinking managerial information flows, and redesigning network processes. A distributed computing environment, new development software methods, capabilities like the Internet and other networks, new entrants in the computer industry, and outsourcing are the technological changes affecting the IT organization. The authors cite eight imperatives in which IT organizations must excel to succeed: achieve two-way strategic alignment; develop effective relationships with line management; deliver and implement new systems; build and manage infrastructure; reskill the IT organization; manage vendor partnerships; build high performance; and redesign and manage the federal IT organization.

General managers and chief executive officers generally determine the information they need through four basic approaches: the by-product technique, the null approach, the key indicator system, and the total study process. A new approach, the Critical Success Factors (CFS) Method, focuses on individual managers and on each manager's current hard and soft information needs. The four prime sources of critical success factors are the structure of the particular industry; the competitive strategy, industry position, and geographic location; environmental factors; and temporal factors. The CFS method is useful at each level of general management.