Pros
Mostly good people with good intentions but every one thought there position and project was the most important task at hand.I started as an Albertsons employee, IT department of 80. Merged with American stores, IT department of 600. Merged with SVU and total of 1500 related IT employees all retained.
Cons
Most IT employees were very teritorial about there positions. Butting heads was all that was acomplished until mid level management stepped in. But they had to have upper levell mangements approval. It turned in to a beurocratic nightmare to accomplish anything. Every quarter 100 to 200 jobs eliminated or sent to India. I saw IT go from a lean machine that could react to market changes to a bloated organization where no one could make decisions unless it was to buy software that never worked. First to market for new IT solutions meant buying something and spending years to modify and learn the pachage. 100 pages of paper work needed to make a simple change plus going through 5 approval phases that could each take weeks. Indian IT people were very good and worked for about a fourth of the price. But did not understand the business and needed very complex and detailed designs in order to produce a work order.