Bite-Sized Training™

What is IT Management?
 What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools

What is IT Management?
Bite-Sized Training
This e-book is published by:

Mind Tools Ltd.

Copyright © Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2012. All rights

reserved.

Version 1.4

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Cover image © iStockphoto/ermingut

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 What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools

Contents

1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4

2. IT Management Basics .................................................................................................................. 5

3. About IT Managers ........................................................................................................................ 8

4. Key Learning Points ..................................................................................................................... 11

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 What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools

1. Introduction
When you start work in the morning – and that So, whether you’re a user of technology or a
can be in the office or on the road – you probably developer or maintainer of technology,
turn on your computer and phone. Then, you’re understanding the nature of managing information
connected to the processes, people, and systems and technology is an important strategic
information that you need in order to do your job. issue that managers in all departments should be
It’s a situation that was unimaginable a aware of.
generation ago, of course. But we now expect this
“as standard,” and we probably only think about With this Bite-Sized Training session, we’re going
the people in IT when something goes wrong. to introduce you to the basics of the IT
management function. The objectives for this
In this session, we’re encouraging you to take a session are to understand:
step back to find out more about the IT activities
that go on behind the scenes. These ensure that  The fundamental role of IT in
the IT function at your organization runs smoothly organizations.
all of the time, and progresses and develops as
required.  The skills required to be a good IT
manager.
Managing IT isn’t solely the responsibility of IT
managers. Mangers in human resources, sales,  The challenges of IT management.
manufacturing, legal, financial, and many other
functional departments must work with their IT
colleagues. They must ensure that business
needs are being best served by technology, by
achieving the most appropriate balance of cutting-
edge versus tried-and-tested systems, cost
versus functionality, and change versus stability.

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2. IT Management Basics
A Definition
IT is about automating business processes. So
managing IT requires an understanding of the
business, an understanding of the process of
automation (including the technologies and
methods that can be used), and an assessment
of the economics of automation to ensure that
value is generated, not consumed, through the
automation process.
Proactive and Reactive
IT Management involves a lot more than simply
providing the service requested. Typically, the
business will drive the request for automation,
and the IT function will act in a service capacity to
deliver the automation required. However, it’s
often the case that the IT department can identify
automation opportunities that the business
functions have not seen, because the IT team has
knowledge about the capabilities and economics
of certain technologies that the business does
not.
Equally, the IT department may be in the
strongest position to be able to question the
economic benefit of an automation exercise,
because it may be uniquely aware of the potential
complexities. Hence, in mature businesses, key
business leaders are increasingly expecting and
empowering IT managers to act in a leadership
role, as well as in a service capacity.
IT strategy must always be a facet of business
strategy. In many cases it’s the component of
business strategy that defines what and how to
automate. But in an increasing number of
businesses it’s also the rationale for a business
strategy. For example, a university might decide
to develop a set of e-learning courses to
complement its campus-based courses if its IT
manager demonstrates that new technology can
be implemented in a cost-effective way to deliver
these.
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What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools
The Two Main Functions of IT
Typically, IT services in large organizations are
split into two main categories: Infrastructure and
applications. You can think of infrastructure as
being like the tracks and stations of a railroad
operation, and the application services teams as
being the equivalent of those who run the actual
train services.
Infrastructure provides networks, data centers,
servers, storage, databases, connectivity,
backups and the tools and staff to manage all
these core components. Typically the
infrastructure team will also provide “desktop”
services, which include everything that the user
can touch (PCs, laptops, mobile devices, printers,
phones, and so on).
Application teams will implement or develop
applications to support specific business
processes. For example, accounting systems,
stock ordering systems, HR management
systems, and so on. The exception to this rule is
highly commoditized applications (for example,
email or Microsoft Office applications) which are
often installed straight “out-of-the-box” with little
or no customization. These applications are
usually managed by infrastructure teams rather
than application teams.
As well as keeping day-to-day operations going,
IT departments are also usually involved in the
projects that develop and extend the IT
capabilities of the organization. Change activities
primarily managed by infrastructure teams would
include network upgrades or the integration of
new buildings, or business acquisitions.
Meanwhile, application teams would handle
things like delivery of new functionality specific to
a business process.
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Many functions of the IT division require
application teams and infrastructure teams to
work closely together (for example, delivering
new applications, testing the ability to recover
from certain types of “disaster,” or designing
security mechanisms to keep data safe).
Technology Impact
Action: Now think about how you work with your
colleagues in the IT department.
Who, in IT, have you had contact with in the past
few months, and what was it about?
Name Issue
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What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools
Action: Think about the importance of IT to your
role. What technologies do you rely on to do your
work, and how do they impact your efficiency and
output?
Was this an infrastructure issue or an application
issue?
Infrastructure or Application
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As with other business support functions such as
HR and finance, some activities that used to be
the preserve of the specialists in the IT
department are now done by functional managers
out in the business. In other words, IT
management doesn’t just happen in the IT
department.
Training, for example, is often done informally by
another team member, or arranged through HR.
Activity
Action: What do you see as IT’s main activities in your organization?
Activity
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What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools
And people regularly take advantage of the
powerful but relatively user-friendly functionality of
programs like Microsoft Excel to create
automated solutions to small parts of their
business processes.
Action: What IT management activities are you
or members of your team able to, or assigned to,
work on yourself?
Infrastructure or Application
Infrastructure or Application
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3. About IT Managers
Skills Required for IT Management
The skills required in good IT managers are
complex and demanding. They include:
 A good understanding of the particular
types of technologies in use in the
organization (both application
technologies and infrastructure
technologies).
 A good understanding of business
processes in their organization.
 An ability to conceptualize and design
effective automation.
 Good change management skills. (IT
projects, by definition, are almost always
change projects.)
 Strong interpersonal skills to facilitate
good interaction with a broad range of
business and technical personnel, both in-
house and externally in supplier
organizations.
Skills and Qualities of Effective IT
Managers
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 Good technical leadership skills (including
the ability to define and demand specific
quality standards).
 Good project management skills (such as
the ability to plan, track and deliver to
milestones).
 Financial astuteness – an ability to make a
good assessment on benefits arising from
automation and to manage increasingly
large budgets.
Increasingly, IT management is becoming a very
lucrative career, reflecting the rich and
demanding skills required, and their rarity.
Action: Think about the most effective IT
managers that you’ve come across at work, and
also the least effective. What did the good ones
do that made them effective? What did the less
successful ones do which led to their
ineffectiveness?
Traits and Behaviors of Ineffective IT
Managers
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You’ve probably found that the difference
between the effective and the ineffective IT
managers lies in their “softer” skills and general
business acumen, rather than in their technical
expertise!
Job Titles
Where there is a specific leader of IT
management in an organization, you might see
titles like:
 IT Manager.
 Computer Systems Manager.
 Information Systems Manager.
 Management Information Systems (MIS)
Manager.
 Technology Manager.
Note:
In large organizations, the person ultimately
responsible for IT decisions is often the Chief
Information Officer (CIO) or the Chief Technology
Officer (CTO). In smaller organizations, the role of
CIO is often incorporated into another key role or
dispersed to other managers within the
organization.
The Major Decisions that IT Managers
Make
The key decisions that IT managers have to make
are inevitably related to the fundamental purpose
of IT – that is, automating business processes. IT
managers will regularly have to make decisions
about:
 The suitability of business processes for
automation.
Infrastructure Developments
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What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools
 The optimal approach to automation for a
given process (which technologies to use,
how to structure the project to achieve the
time, cost, and quality terms of the
business, and so on).
 Staffing and sourcing strategy to deliver
the automation (including decisions on
supplier choice, contract management).
 How to approach to day-to-day issues with
live applications and infrastructure.
Challenges Facing IT Managers
The biggest challenge for most IT managers is
the pace of change of business processes.
Increasingly, the economics associated with the
increasing speed of business mean that IT
solutions must be fast-to-deploy, adaptable, and
economical. Legacy platforms, which have not
been well designed, can quickly reach the point
where the cost of incremental change no longer
generates sufficient benefit to justify the work. IT
architecture is an increasingly critical discipline,
enabling IT managers to build modular,
decoupled, “plug and play” components which
can be easily integrated.
Action: Note down some of the recent IT
developments in both infrastructure and
applications in your organization that you’re
aware of.
Application Developments
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Were these developments a long time coming, or
were they implemented rapidly? If it’s the latter,
that’s a good indicator that your organization’s IT
is being well-managed.
A second significant challenge in many industries
is the increasing commoditization of hardware
and the associated demand for faster, cheaper
processing power. For some businesses, the
limiting factor in building faster processes is
electrical power. Many data centers have a “glass
ceiling” on the amount of processing that they can
actually do, because they cannot source enough
electricity from the grid to power the increasing
numbers of cheaper, faster, more power-hungry
server machines that they host. In industries
Impact of power cost and availability on your organization:
Steps being taken, or that could be taken:
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What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools
where the ability to process data ever faster gives
them specific competitive advantage (for
example, trading houses) some companies have
gone as far as building their own power stations
to power their data centers.
That said, basing servers and IT services
externally on “the cloud” is now a reliable and
effective option for many businesses.
Action: Think about how the rising cost and
reducing availability of power affect your
organization’s IT Infrastructure. What steps have
your IT managers taken, or what steps could they
take to mitigate these impacts, if any?
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4. Key Learning Points
IT exists to support the processes of the business
through automation. IT managers therefore need
to react to requests from the business to
automate processes, but also be on the lookout
for opportunities to use new technology to
improve business processes.
In addition to this developmental work, IT needs
to maintain and support existing infrastructure
systems and applications.
© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2012
What is IT Management? Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools
IT managers need substantial business acumen
in addition to technical skills if they are to be
successful. They need a thorough understanding
of their organization, its strategies, objectives,
functions, and processes, and the people skills to
manage suppliers and to work successfully with
colleagues in other departments.
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