Question

There are an infinite number of ways that you can design your Organizational Unit structure within Active Directory. There are four generally accepted methods that are considered best practice:

• Political/Functional

• Geographic

• Resource-based

• User classification

Discuss pro/cons of one of these methods or discuss a different methodology on OU structure.

Answer 1

Let's take a look at the pros and cons of all methods for designing OU:

1. Political/Functional - Following are the pros of Political/Functional OU design:

(a.) Specialization takes care of a dependable level of departmental competence.This is useful for big organizations which have large departments handling specific responsibilities.

(b.) According to operational responsibilities. With this method we can separate the tasks to different people. That creates better understanding and clarity over different operations.

(c.) Dividing work on level basis like senior and junior level. This makes operational speed even faster as seniors can train the juniors and make them work ready.

Following are the disadvantages of Political/Functional OU design:

(a.) For a longer run, segregation can be a disadvantage as people get divided into teams and soon they feel unable to share their perspectives into different work areas.

(b.) There will be less participation if the group of people will get divided. there would be less communication and cordination in teams which will lead to failure of tasks.It will also create terretorial disputes in between people and departments.

2. Geographic OU - Following are the Pros:

(a.) It provides a centralized way where from different location people can work collaborately under one project. It helps an Organization to grow and become big.

(b.) This way lower level OU's can collaborate with higher level OU's easily and remotely.

Following are the Cons -

(a.) It becomes difficult sometimes to have a permission based authority to see the inheritance of different level changes from different locations.

3. Resource based - Following are the Pros:

(a.) Having different resources available is a big advantage for multiple workspaces

(b.) It provides 24*7 availability of business.

Following are the Cons:

(a.) Having number of resources increase the cost of work as rent and infrastructure also increases.

4. User Based - Following are the Pros:

(a.) Classifying users based OU comes with lots of benefits of dividing the units into workforces.

(b.) Based on dependencies and opportunities, users can switch.

(c.) Creates collaborative environment.

Following are the Cons:

(a.) Reporting to multiple managers may conflict sometimes.

(b.) Level of work pressure.

Hope my answer will help