Forty years of the corporate information technology function at Texaco Inc. – A history

This paper is a history of Texaco’s Corporate IT Function (IT) from its inception until Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001. The four decades of Texaco IT are best characterized by a contrast between the function’s performance and its resources. According to third party measures, Texaco IT was a top performer amongst oil-industry IT functions and third party service providers. Yet starting soon after its inception, the department endured a resource squeeze. As the workload increased, IT’s relative resources shrank. Throughout its history, user dissatisfaction with the unit was prevalent. We believe that the Texaco IT story is a typical account of the experiences of many large corporate IT organizations. The unit was a success by the measures of the profession, but failed in the eyes of top management and business units.