There is also the fact that ownership is typically federated along with the operations, creating a tendency for finger-pointing rather than active problem resolution. Furthermore, federated operational models are frequently plagued by a "weakest-link" syndrome, where one unit/division drags down all of the others to a common level of (unsatisfactory) service delivery. And too often when the organization believes it has successfully set up a federated system, complacency sets in and all the problems created by different parties trying to work with one another start to fester. The result can be an absolute horror show, the consultant says.

"The fundamental failing point of federated models is that in leveraging the strengths of all of these different groups and their different specializations, you are implicitly also having to deal with the weaknesses of each of those organizations. There are also many, many different people, many, many personalities involved, and inevitably there is going to be conflict between individuals, let alone organizational conflict over different priorities.

"[The] bottom line is that it tends to reinforce an old-fashioned view of IT, that IT exists in its own right, and businesspeople are just a distraction because of the need to focus inwardly on the partners making up the federated operations," he says.

The common theme with all recent efforts to hand off responsibility for IT, including outsourcing, offshoring, rightshoring, collaborative sourcing and the federated model, is that without a strong internal management capability you are likely to create a monster that will prove difficult if not impossible to effectively manage.

"The best way to manage it is to have a very, very competent manager, who is responsible for the operation of those groups as well as for the operation of the contract," the consultant says, "because inevitably you're going to have to draw on that contract when parties get into conflict. There are dozens of horror stories about what happens if you just duck-shove IT off to someone else. You might think you are transferring the risk, but you are still wearing that risk, and you're wearing the consequences," he says.

(See "Governance the Key to Meaningful Federation")