IT Manager's Guidebook

By Voytek Andrzejewski

The IT Manager's Guidebook is an essential resource for managers or promotable IT engineers seeking to enhance their leadership skills and achieve organizational success. This comprehensive handbook provides a practical and insightful roadmap to navigate IT management's challenging and complex landscape.
Drawing upon years of real-world experience, this guidebook covers various topics, offering actionable strategies, proven techniques, and valuable insights to help IT managers excel in their new roles. Whether overseeing a small team or leading a large organization, this guidebook equips you with the tools and knowledge to become an effective and influential leader.
With its practical advice and real-life examples, The IT Manager's Guidebook is an indispensable tool for any manager committed to achieving excellence. Whether you are just beginning your managerial journey or seeking to refine your existing skills, this guidebook will empower you to become an influential leader who can drive positive change and inspire your team to reach new heights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Voytek Andrzejewski
• Release date: Jun 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223523482

Book preview

IT MANAGER’S GUIDEBOOK

A Starter Guide for Aspiring Leaders in the Technology Industry

Voytek Andrzejewski

For my wife, without whom, my ideas would end up no more than a distant memory.

Contents

Why I Wrote this Book

Your Roadmap

Book Overview

Preparation

Is Stepping Up the Right Thing for You?

Change Your CV

The Interview

Success Can Take Time

Preparation is Key

The First Day

Onboarding

Side Note - The Culture

The First Week

The First Week Plan

Meet the Team

Note the Systems

Create a Skillset Matrix

Find the Gaps

Set up Spot Meetings

Your checklist for the first week

The First Month

Side Note - The Imposter Syndrome

Determine Your Budget

OPEX

CAPEX

Salaries

Spending Your Budget

Cost Saving

Write Good Job Descriptions

Setup a Backup Strategy

Organise Outage Notifications

Side Note: Consistent Denial

Nail the Asset Management

Manage the Licenses and Support Contracts

Side Note: Revenue Generation via license renewal

Your checklist for the first month

The First Six Months

Deal with the Unsupported Systems

Set up a Ticketing System

Create KPIs

Clarify and Renew Warranties

Build Relationships with Vendors

Implement a Product Lifecycle Strategy

Develop a Training Plan

Address the Single Points of Failure

Build Resilience

Your Checklist for the First 6 Months

The First Year

Implement Product Standardisation

Create Compliance Documentation

Develop a Roadmap

Organise Change Management

Support Levels

Understand Salaries

Your Checklist for the First Year

Year Two and Beyond

Auditing

Business Growth

The Circle of Life

Tricks of the Trade

Time Management

Timeboxing

Delegation

Retention

Dealing with the Liars

The Toxic Culture

Project Management

Scope Definition

Design

Programme

Contingency

Kick Off

Completion

Conflict Resolution

The Squeaky Wheel

Presentations

Business cases

Micro-segmentation

Reporting

Me time

A Final Word

Why I Wrote this Book

Hello there. You have probably picked up this Book or listening to it because you are either about to start a new role as an IT manager or keen to see what someone who has done it for many years may offer.

This Book is based on my real-world experiences in this field. I have learned skills from some good managers and understood the mistakes of other not-so-good ones. I have made poor choices on many occasions and tried different strategies, but I always wished there was something like this Book available for me. Something that came without all the lingo that tends to come with management books.

I started from quite humble beginnings. In my school years, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. The Highschool I attended was pushing me and my peers toward careers in medicine, law, or commerce. These were subjects I wasn’t really interested in. I love video games and technology but never really had exposure to careers in that field at a young age. As time went on, I realized I wasn’t going to amount to much through high school, so I left to start working. I started cooking and became a Chefs apprentice. While I did well there and realized I had a good work ethic, it wasn’t a passion for long. Around the time I was finishing up my fourth year as a Chef, the Army was advertising heavily here in Australia, so I signed up. There was a wide range of roles you could choose from, and thanks to a conversation with my mother, a path in Signals seemed to have a future. She insisted I was clever enough to try for a Signalman role, dealing primarily in LAN and WAN systems. I gave it a shot, sat the tests, and passed. This was an amazing experience, and I was finally learning about IT systems. My passion had been unlocked.

I am not saying that you must have a passion for IT, but it certainly helps. When times get tough in your career, leaning back on your passion will be your crutch. This passion will keep you going and moving into better times. It helped me, and 20 years later, I am managing teams of passionate IT engineers and admins using everything I have learned to promote their development. You can do the same, and by reading through the steps in this Book, I’ll show you how.

I ended up where I am today purely through hard work and commitment. I stayed true to myself and respectful the whole way up the ladder. I changed jobs a lot, but only to continue challenging myself. This is important. If you stagnate in a role or feel bored, it is time to seek challenges. As time progressed, I found myself taking on roles that managed people and business processes, and I was so lost. I read some books that made no sense, others that didn’t fit my situation, and some that were just plain wrong. I learned, through trial and error, from experienced people willing to share and great forums of like-minded peers. My goal here is to target new managers or promotable people that need some starting points to work towards.

I am not here to put you to sleep with graphs and processes to make myself look good. I just want to relay what I have learned and hopefully give you a different perspective on the actual reality of the job.

The IT manager role means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I think the basis is the same. IT systems need to run and support the business, no matter what it is. Your job as the manager of these systems is to keep them running and running the best they can. No need to mess about with justifications for what you do. Your job is to keep these systems up and performing. Always remember this.

I want to help you do this by providing some easy steps. This Book is about those steps and an attempt to arm you with some knowledge on what to do in your first day, week, year, and eventually how to maintain a smooth-running department.

The coolest part of our job is we get to see technology do amazing things. I have worked in mining and seen systems that monitor a pile of dust turning into a bar of gold. I worked in finance, where systems monitored second-by-second transactions. I have seen racks and racks of equipment turn into a single rack yet provide the same experience. I love this work, and I hope you do too. You should keep that passion because now you get to lead teams that will notice the passion you have. You are not a manager for the sake of a bigger pay packet, you are stepping into a leadership role, and as such, you are going to drive a team to do great things.

Let’s delve into what to expect and what you should focus on to be successful. Sure, add your own flair and read other books, but I want you to have a read of this Book and come away realizing that it’s not overwhelming, and you don’t have to be Superman to do it. This job should be fun, and I’ll help you keep it that way.

Your Roadmap

Let us look at the book from a very high level. In this section, I want you to understand this roadmap is a guide for you and to highlight the points you should focus on. Additionally, I will break down when you should focus on them. The book will delve into these a little more as we move on, but for now, just take a moment to understand you do not need to understand everything right away. You can plan your actions over a longer period of time.

When you start a new job or get promoted into a management role, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by the status quo. You know, the whole this is how we do it mentality. You quickly find yourself falling into line and lose sight of what the problems were in the first place. After a few months, you are a piece of furniture, and all the aspirations to change are lost to complacency. While this is a comfortable place to be, it is not the intention of your role. People hire managers to introduce positive change. To reflect and improve. To evolve and enhance. Use this book to help you do that. There are many ways to function as a team, but the steps here are to help you reflect on how your team should function, improve their performance, and evolve the team into a well-oiled machine.

I wrote down these steps personally without all the wording to keep myself in check as I grow with the company. They are my personal compass to ensure I don’t end up complacent, and I worked hard to achieve a lot of the guidelines detailed here. I want you to do the same. In fact, I made a similar checklist at the end of each section for you to use. Tick them off as you go and get a sense of accomplishment when you have implemented them.

I follow this guide every time I take on a new role and focus on these areas before moving on. Sure, they may chop and change depending on the requirements of the job but not dramatically. Keep referring to them and take stock of what is missing from achieving them. Understand the gaps and go at it from a different angle.

Book Overview

This book is broken up into sections based on a loose timeline. The key is to achieve the goals set out within each period before you move on to the next area. For example, I will lay out the requirements you should look to achieve in your first week at a new job. Try to avoid deviating from these too much or overreaching. Use the time effectively and get to understand your goal. I advise sticking to the goals within the timelines and nailing them; you will soon find that some are harder to achieve than others.

First Week – Meet your team and understand the business.

The first week is critical to your future at a company or as a team leader. You will be judged, questioned, and challenged from the outset, and knowing what to do will help you stand up to these challenges.

First Month – Understand your budget, operational requirements, Basic cyber security, communications plans, and contracts.

Dig deeper and get to know your department's financial goals and processes.

First six months – Set up ITIL practices, key performance indicators, asset management, training plans, and infrastructure resilience.

Start making positive changes to your department. Let's get that machine oiled up and running smoothly.

First Year – Implement standardization, roadmaps, compliance, some more ITIL and SLAs

Nail down the processes within your department and start measuring performance and forecasting expenditure.

Year on Year – Begin auditing and push for growth.

Help your company grow through the technologies you manage.

Preparation

Is Stepping Up the Right Thing for You?

It would be best if you asked yourself this before taking the leap. You are probably in a position where your managers pressure you. Maybe someone in the position has left, and people are looking to you. Or you are in line for succession, and you feel you are ready.

Each of these situations is similar. All of these situations are an opportunity, a chance to challenge yourself. As I said earlier, you should look to new challenges if you are stagnating or bored. That doesn't mean stepping into a management role is a good idea. You need to understand that it is a different set of skills required. Your technical skillset will help, of course, but it needs to take a back seat. Your preconceived ideas of being a good IT worker also need to be left behind. You must understand you're not there to turn everyone into a version of yourself. Empathy is a huge part of your new role. Putting yourself in other people's shoes, seeing the bigger picture, and understanding the business goals, are the focus of your new role.

This may mean you will need to take a back seat and let others do the tech work. Are you going to be able to let go?

This may mean that your technical skills take a back seat to administrative work. Are you willing to work outside your comfort zone again?

This may mean that you need to constantly look for improvements in business processes that don't necessarily include technology. Are you keen to understand financial and human resource challenges?

If you ask yourself these questions and the answer is yes. Go for it.

Let me explain based on experience. When I started, I was very much a technical resource and was expected to configure the usual IT systems one would expect. I reported to management on my tasks, and life was simple. I had a very narrow field of responsibility.

I'll be honest, back then, I felt like my managers were useless and a waste of time. I had no empathy for them, and I didn't get it. I felt like they didn't really understand my narrow little world to the same degree I did, and therefore, their position in the company didn't matter.

As time passed, I was asked to step up and look after a small team that did a similar job to mine. I took the job without hesitation and without thinking it through. It was a hasty decision, and I took a significant risk without knowing it. Luckily, it was a mild step up, and I had worked with the team previously on multiple projects. The role was different from what I expected. My manager put me in the position, and I was suddenly accountable for a budget and dealing with resourcing issues. It was a small couple of tasks, but they made me realize that once you step into this world, it doesn't matter how technical you are; if you want to be good at it, you need to leave that behind. I suddenly had two jobs to do...

Fast forward to today, and I don't even touch the technical aspects of the job anymore. I am interested and love listening to my team working through a problem, but I am in the back seat regarding that stuff. My job keeps me