Just imagine if I picked you up and dropped you into a workplace that you had never been in before. What would the first thing that you’d do as an IT manager be? I’m willing that you’d want to collect as much information about the situation that you had found yourself in as possible – sure seems like one of those IT manager skills that we should all have. Well, it turns out that if you want to be a successful IT manager this is exactly what you need to know how to do…
What Is An IT Assessment?
Before you can conduct an assessment, you’re going to have to have a good understanding of just exactly what we’re talking about. The goal of any IT assessment is to identify the business issues that your company has that require IT support.
Since there is no IT manager training for doing this, one of the most difficult things for IT managers to keep in mind while they are performing an assessment is that an IT assessment is more of a business assessment than a technical assessment. The question that you’re trying to get answered is what business issues are going to have to be focused on if the company is going to succeed.
During an assessment, you’ll get feedback from various parties that will let you know that there are areas in which the IT department is not meeting the needs of one or more clients. Once you have this information, you are going to want to do some mapping. You’ll want to relate the complaint to the IT technical support areas that are required in order to support this part of the business.
How Can You Conduct An IT Assessment?
Understanding how to conduct an IT assessment is a good first step. However, the real trick is knowing how to go about conducing an assessment that will provide you with the data that you’re going to need in order to make sure that your team is actually doing the work that needs to be done.
Ultimately, a successful IT assessment is going to require you to interview the right sets of people. There are three main groups that you’re going to need to sit down and talk with. These include your senior management (anyone’s who job title begins with a “C”), the IT department’s clients (may be other departments, may be external firms), and, of course, members of the IT staff.
Every IT assessment needs to relate the company’s business needs to how the IT department is going about supporting them. This will include making sure that you have a good understanding of your IT infrastructure, what applications are being used to support the company, the staffing level of the IT department, and what processes are in place to allow the IT department to support its clients.
What Does All Of This Mean For You?
IT managers who find themselves in a new situation due to a promotion or an organizational realignment need to move quickly to determine what is expected of both them and their teams(in addition to some well-done IT team building). The best way to get the information that you are going to need is to conduct an IT assessment.
An assessment is used to provide you with an understanding of just exactly what the IT support issues that the company is facing are. What you are looking for is getting an understanding of what your IT team needs to be working on and the priority associated with each item. In order to conduct an assessment, you are going to have to take the time to interview the right people in the company.
The biggest mistake that any IT manager can make is to keep your head down and just keep doing your work. Take the time to assess your situation by performing an IT assessment and you’ll be able to make sure that your team is working on the right things. Do this correctly and you’ll be able to show your true leadership ability.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™
Question For You: How much time do you think that you could spend conducting an IT assessment?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
There is one universal rule to being a successful IT manager: your team has to be working on the right things if you ever want to be successful. This is one of the IT manager skills that we all need to have. You would think that this would be pretty elementary – of course you’re working on the right things. However, you’d be surprised at just how often this turns out to not be the case. There are a lot of reasons why you might find yourself in this situation; however, let’s spend some time talking about how you can avoid this problem all together.