Who is accountable for application sprawl?

In my last post I mentioned application sprawl. In many organisation, like self replicating nano-bots, the list of applications that enables the business to function increases uncontrollably. The IT organisation tries to bring some order to this chaos with limited success.

We try demand management techniques, which may be designed to help people to stop and think but are largely seen as barriers to change,dampeners on the springs of agility. We enforce standards, erect governing bodies and create IS Strategies (aligned with business strategies, of course). Despite all this effort there are still the exceptions justified by "my case is special"; and let's not open the can of worms that is self-built solutions - those excel spreadsheets, access databases and (heaven forbid) the unauthorised use of free services on the web.

This is application sprawl, and it exists to some degree or another in every organisation large enough to have an IT department (and probably many that don't as well).