@Paul - yes teamwork means that everyone is pulling towards a common goal. That is the theme here.

@Anand - and as you also aptly point out, leadership is critical in forging that teamwork - giving it that corporate alignment.  So yes selecting and grooming leadership is vital for the organization's success.

Cohesiveness within well defined structures should deliver efficient results.

You cannot combine a bunch of people and expect them to work together without clear recognition of elected or appointed leadership.

@Mansur, thanks for the post. I totally agree with your opinion that leadership plays a crucial role in building the team. Hence companies should carefully choose the leaders because success of failure of team will depend on it.

I think Team work is the big "Buzz Word" in this nicely written Post. You must have cohesiveness in all the IT units in your organization or you will be facing many challenges you shouldn't be.

Right, there can never really be a one size fits all solution. So each project must be designed appropriately for optimum results

I do agree that some critical systems are not able to be outsourced, at least not easily. So each projects dynamics need to be understood before the decision to outsource or otherwise is reached.

@SunitaT

You cant start training your team for each and every job, there is a limit for every body, after that they will stop paying attention.

While in most cases outsourcing makes sense, there are cases where companies may be better off having an in-house team because of security reasons or the critical nature of the issues they face.

@Taimur, I totally agree with your opinion. There is always security risk assosciated with outsourcing. Moreover with rising inflation in developing nations cost of outsourcing has also increased. So sometimes it is better to use in-house team rather than outsourcing the task.

well you cant have every thing developed by in-house team, they dont have the expertise for all of the work.

@Usman, true. In-house team may not have all the expertise needed but companies can always hire expertise from industry to train their teams. This team building effort might cost the company initially but in the long it helps to build the in-house expertise.

@ Mansur

I am not a big fan of organizational CIOs dual reporting. That level CIO should report to the President/CEO.

If an organization is forcing a CIO to report both to the CEO and the business heads/VPs, then it is downgrading the CIO's authority and his competence. In organizations where processes are defined well and IT is of significant importance, it is highly unlikely that such a dual reporting role is given to CIO.