In many ways this movie reminds me of an IT department (bear with me here). CIOs inherit all the decisions, good and bad, that their predecessors made. As a result, they often are being asked to “clean house” — to simplify, to automate, to gain efficiencies and to cut down on rogue technology.

Looking over this year’s CIO Innovators profiles, you’ll find that CIOs clearly have cleaned house — without the help of spiritual guides. Among them is Steven Johns, the subject of our first CIO Innovator profile in 2011. He rolled up his sleeves when he inherited an “infrastructure overhaul” on joining H.B. Fuller Co. in 2007. His plan of attack was to take back the core functions of IT from a third-party outsourcing giant, update legacy systems and move non-core functions to the cloud. This “turnaround guy” met the needs of users through the adoption of cloud solutions; those in turn reduced rogue technology. He also cleaned up some big messes that had been left behind: systems in place since the 1980s and no standard collaboration system across the global company, to name just two.

But as CIOs begin to build the next foundations in an age of cloud computing, shared IT services and the consumerization of IT, I wonder whether they are potentially adding a weak foundational layer, at least in terms of controlling rogue technology. Are they adding to the problem as they accommodate the age of people-centric computing?

Self-service provisioning, for example, often is talked about as a must-have for shared services to succeed. Self-service provisioning portals also are a tenet of cloud computing. Some CIOs believe that “self-services” — putting the power of technology choice into the hands of users — is the future of any good IT services organization. Left to their own devices, however, will users really make the right decisions?

Will rogue technology, which leads to silos of information — something CIOs are trying to undo in this Information Age — only get worse?

Sure, making it easier for users to get their hands on the technology they need is not only smart but inevitable. On the other hand, what precautions should CIOs be taking to lay a solid self-service foundation?

To back up a bit: This week and next we’ll be publishing stories on SearchCIO.com that define a shared services model from the IT executive’s point of view. Be forewarned: There are many CIO points of view on this topic. Here’s one definition of shared services: a multi-tenant environment in which IT resources and skills are pooled internally. As one IT executive put it, a shared services model is more about “the service and not the server.” Gone are the days when hardware and applications were dedicated to a given business unit. Instead, they now are pooled to be used as needed for projects and changing business needs.

As resources are pooled, however, whether in a multi-tenant environment or in a traditional centralized-IT model, IT executives are rethinking how they charge for IT services that are shared instead of dedicated. Is IT chargeback based on use really necessary? If it is, how should IT go about it?

The customers of one consultant with a systems integrator are having a pretty hard time trying to answer audit questions when they’re asked what exactly they bought for a particular project, he said. In a shared services environment, where a project investment is tied to usage as opposed to the purchase of a server, the answer isn’t simple. And, he added, the organization might not even have the metering or reporting tools to break out who is using which resources and what to charge them.

David Johns, CIO at Owens Corning, said he doesn’t bother with IT chargeback at all under his shared services model, because it takes IT’s focus off the business and ultimately the end customer, and is a burden on business units. “What value is there to the end customer if you spend an enormous amount of time going through a massive exercise focused on service charges to a business [unit]?” he asked.

In our upcoming stories, we’ll be exploring the issue of IT chargeback, the benefits of the shared services model and whether self-service provisioning portals are a given for shared services success.

Some say self-service absolutely is the ultimate end game of any well-run IT services organization. But where does that leave IT?