Scott New IT Leader

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4835-3783-2
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 316 Seiten

Here's a simple question: what makes a great technology manager? It's a deceivingly simple question. The challenges faced by IT managers today driven by an explosive integration of technology into society makes this very difficult to answer. Really, it all comes down to two fundamental principles: •Having a good working relationship with the people you serve (your customer) •Consistently deliver a quality, reliable product MANAGING TECHNOLOGY DOESN'T HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT Don't let the complexities of technology keep you from being successful as a technology leader. The frustration felt by business leaders about technology organizations is usually rooted in the inability to deliver a service they expected. The mechanics to be successful as a technology leader and meet the demands of the business is complicated and intertwined. Technology just makes the problem more opaque. Fortunately, all it takes is a disciplined approach to management to be successful in addressing the aforementioned principles. The New IT Leader lays out how to build a management framework that any technology leader can employ. Customers will feel more comfortable in your ability to deliver essential services needed to maintain critical business functions. And in the process, you'll build a high-performing, efficient, and effective technology team!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Scott, Tony

Leseproben

Let’s Begin If you are a technology manager, congratulations, you’ve landed one of the most difficult and demanding jobs in modern history. The challenges in sustaining critical business infrastructure while helping business leaders realize their strategic visions are often difficult to overcome. Consider these examples of obstacles IT managers must contend with: • Consumerization of technology drives unrealistic expectations on the part of the customer that technology is easy • Security concerns and breaches requiring new layers of technology introduced into the architecture that then introduces new variables into the maintenance equation • Relatively uneducated managers put into roles around technology that then drive technical decisions (this happens more often than governments and corporations want to admit) And there are countless more examples. Yes, it’s a tough job, one of the toughest in the marketplace. But if it were easy, everyone would do it. You are in your position because you are expected to have the technical skills to navigate the complex landscape of technical interdependencies and the management skills to govern your team and the teams around your department. As difficult as the job is, I still love technology. I’ve always been fascinated with what it can do for people and society. Ever since I was in junior high, when I started programming on an Apple I, I realized that somehow this was going to change the way we live our lives. Technology certainly has lived up to its expectations – the innovations that have been developed over the past 40 years have influenced every corner of society and every corner of the world!! We’ve got capabilities at our fingertips that have transformed our lives in ways people could not have imagined outside of the realm of science fiction – can you image what you would do without your cell phone? Even now, cell phones are becoming so powerful that they dwarf the capabilities of computers from 15 years ago. It is amazing the impact that technology has had on the world given its relatively new footprint in corporations and governments. Look at traditional functions like sales, marketing, finance, and accounting. These disciplines have been around for centuries: well thought out standards and approaches are the luxuries that time has provided them. Technology hasn’t had this advantage. As technologists, we’ve leveraged and wielded technology to the extent possible, but we continue to struggle with what seems to be often an unmanageable number of variables to effectively deliver technology that fits precisely what the business is looking for (just look at the Affordable Care Act website as a case study). In my experience, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that the problem stems from a lack of basic operational discipline in the delivery of technology. This leads to several delivery problems including the inability of IT organizations to express what will or can be delivered in a way that the business can appreciate (along with all of the caveats and risks with delivery of a technology solution). What’s missing? Well, look, I wish I could point out the one thing that makes technology management easy, but this isn’t a single-dimensional problem. Most technologists I’ve worked with, while brilliant and can solve complex problems, are naturally introverted. Then there are equipment failure and downstream implications those have. Oh, and let’s not forget that business leaders may not know what they are looking for (they know something’s wrong but don’t have a clear vision about how to address it). And there are infinitely more variables that come into play including the examples above. So everything in technology is unique, every solution, every problem, every project. In response, standards have been developed, processes embraced, and certifications earned. These will only get a technology manager halfway there. I ask again, what’s missing? We have to go back to my conclusion: there’s a lack of basic operational discipline. I’m not implying that technology managers are incompetent. Just the opposite! We have a monumental task on our hands. What I am saying is that in general the track record for technology organizations to deliver services to the business hasn’t been stellar. I’m also saying that this job is complex. In order to be successful in a complex environment, full of unknown variables, you have to have a disciplined approach to management. And no, it’s not easy. But it can be done, and done very well almost every time. About 10 years ago, I was confronted with management consultants who assigned to build efficiencies into our IT department. Problem was, they didn’t know anything about IT. As I tried to describe the entirety of the scope of an IT leader’s job, I started to feel like one of those employees being interviewed by the Bobs in the move Office Space. And no one else they talked to could either. Yeah, there was the obvious keep your customer happy by landing projects on time and on budget and minimize outages. But when you are in the crosshairs of the Bobs, how do you rebound? That’s what spurred me to begin building out a framework to describe what I was supposed to do as a manager. At that time, most education provided to managers was around specific processes (and might I say siloed processes at that) to help navigate only one specific discipline (Six Sigma, PMI, ITIL, and on and on). I decided to define the scope from the IT application manager’s point of view because they have the closest ties to the business. Eventually, everything in technology rolls up to that point where an application is delivered to the business. The purpose of this book is to provide you, the IT application manager, a framework to organize yourself around. The book covers, at a high level, all the focus areas or domains that I’ve found are needed to cover the basics of your job and gives you some tools to more effectively support your customer. It’s also a reference for those managers supporting you so they can be better prepared to help you in that delivery. Finally, from that framework, you can build a dialog with your customer to assess their needs and jointly determine how best to wield technology to suit their needs, creating real innovation and value with technology. It’s that last point which has eluded so many IT organizations. However, it is entirely within your ability to effectively manage the areas described here, leveraging technology as a strategic asset rather than just another technical platform. Evolution of IT Management Before we delve into the basics of IT management, I think it’s important to understand where we’ve been as an industry. We’ll briefly discuss the history of IT management to provide insight on how we got to where we are now. There wasn’t too much to managing technology back then. But it did have its drawbacks; primarily, little or no upward migration from technology to other parts of the business. In the early days, you tended to be siloed into the systems organization IT organizations, 30 years ago, were much smaller, requiring only focused monitoring and management. Largely absent from the forefront of business operations, system programmers could do most of their work behind the scenes. These organizations usually reported into a CFO as they mainly supported accounting and finance functions. The systems used were largely mainframe based and sat behind glass walls. The concept behind the “glass wall” was that someone could look in, but could not directly influence the day to day activities of the technology staff. As a user, you did not need to know what was going on behind the glass wall – only that the system was kept up (most of the time). There was a reason for that – the chasm between the technology and the business value provided by these systems was filled with tiny bits of micro code. There wasn’t much in the way of 3GL or 4GL code available and most programmers needed to write to one layer above the operating system. Application frameworks were a set of programming best practices, as programmers shared ideas about how to build the most efficient programs to make best use of very limited computing resources available to them, while meeting the ever increasing appetite the business had for productivity gains using technology. There was a time when many systems organizations lost control of the technology platforms as that technology and the people who could wield the technology became accessible to the business. This was the birth of shadow IT organizations and several of those organization still exist today. Programmers of that day were a rare breed in a mostly misunderstood profession with a limited fraternal presence. Your worthiness to join the ranks was based on the caliber of code you developed and your knowledge of the computing environment you worked in. The late 80s and 90s saw a massive transformation of how technology was used by businesses as it moved from back office productivity tools, to enable mission critical business transactions. The underlying technology also became more complex with the introduction of distributed and web based technologies. With the introduction of the personal computer, and the advancement of 3GL and 4GL application frameworks, technology became more accessible and less prohibitive. Distributed systems brought more and more products to market built...