Who's Responsible for Application Success?

I'm at the annual Christian Leadership Alliance (CLA, formerly Christian Management Assoc) Ministry IT Summit in Atlanta. At yesterday's roundtable session someone said something that I found helpful.

The discussion was about who in the organization is responsible for the success of applications used by the team. Most of the time it seems like it is IT's responsibility. But really, it's not! It is the responsibility of the part of the organization that needs it to work for them! IT's role is to make sure it works on the system; not to ensure it's success.

That means that the database folks are responsible to make sure the database works for them; the accounting or finance department is responsible to make sure the accounting system works for them; communications and media are responsible for their applications; and nearly everyone is responsible to learn and use the productivity suite (like MS Office) well.

What do you think?