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Computerworld - For a lot of enterprises, frequent IT reorganizations are a fact of life. Revamping hardware, applications, processes and staff has become a hallmark of the technology function at some organizations.

The IT shuffle is likely to continue into 2012, as organizations look to get maximum benefit from their technology investments in a constantly changing business world. A key consideration for any reorganization, though, is whether it's a knee-jerk reaction to a temporary development in the market or a well-thought-out strategy to truly help the business meet its goals -- with minimum disruption to operations.

Computerworld's Forecast 2012 survey shows a high level of IT reorganizations, with 39% of the 353 IT executives surveyed saying that their IT departments either had undergone reorganizations in the past 12 months or had planned one.

The most common feature of the reorganizations undertaken by the survey respondents was an effort to boost IT's flexibility to meet changing business needs: 47% of those polled said their restructurings included such initiatives. Meanwhile, 35% said their shake-ups involved IT department downsizing or layoffs, another 35% said centralizing IT operations was part of the process, 25% cited a desire to create teams of subject-matter experts, 21% said they were creating a project management office, 21% mentioned boosting the role of enterprise architects, and 18% cited outsourcing.

In the past, IT reorganizations focused on optimizing the IT unit's service delivery, says Bart Perkins, managing partner at Leverage Partners, a Washington-based IT consulting firm. Perkins says those change-ups addressed questions such as how much independence should be given to business unit IT teams, which applications IT should be allowed to develop, whether there should be a single applications organization or separate organizations for development and maintenance, and whether there should be a single infrastructure team or multiple ones organized by technology.

"Today, reorgs focus more on the integration between IT and the business," says Perkins, who is a Computerworld columnist. "A different organization is needed when IT is responsible for activities that are not traditionally IT functions."

Do IT reorganizations get the results that management hopes for? "IT reorgs are no different from any other type of reorg. You don't always get the results you [want]," Perkins says. "The odds are improved if the reorg is carefully planned and executed. The staff has to be told quickly, people have to be handled with dignity, particularly anyone being laid off, [and] the rationale for the new organization has to be compelling."