IT manager of the company. Job description of an information technology manager (IT manager) Who is a technology manager
This is the first in Russia retraining program for IT specialists and managers in the field of information management.
The goal of the program is to develop skills in managing increasing information flows by developing a new understanding of information as a development resource and mastering information and communication technologies in business management. As a result of training, graduates confidently cope with solving problems faced by project managers and business analysts.
The skills and knowledge of a project manager allow us to confidently solve a task by a given deadline within the allocated resources.
Business analyst fluently solves business modeling problems within the framework of SADT, ARIS or RUP methodologies, if software development problems are solved.
Combining competencies project manager and business analytics allow the graduate to take on the challenges of enterprise restructuring, providing the technical and organizational part at the appropriate level, thanks to the synergistic effect.
The program has a practical orientation. During the training process, master classes, business games, round tables are held, case methods are actively used, which allows you to successfully master the skills of a project manager and business analyst.
The program provides for the study of general disciplines in recruitment, financial management, and marketing, which are necessary to create a coherent structure of knowledge that allows you to deeply understand the essence of business project management processes. The block of special disciplines is aimed at developing a deep understanding of business processes and project management. Each student completes a final certification work, which is aimed at solving a practical problem typical of either a business analyst or a project manager. Some diplomas are devoted to tasks that require combining the competencies of a project manager and a business analyst.
Classes are taught by leading teachers of RANEPA, practitioners from real business; successful project managers, experienced business analysts, authors of exclusive textbooks, books and monographs, recognized professionals in their field. Special disciplines are taught by practitioners with extensive experience in specific projects, leading consultants, IT managers and specialists from the largest Russian and Western IT companies.
The school is proud of its graduates - specialists and managers of such large companies as Sberbank of the Russian Federation, MTS, VimpelCom, Troika-Dialog, Ernst and Young, Borlas, Yandex, Wimm-Bill-Dann, Luxoft, Alfa-Bank, RBC, etc. d.
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Who should an IT manager be? IT specialist or manager? IT knowledge certainly matters in this position. However, IT managers who understand IT at the user level often turn out to be even better IT managers than those who come from system administrators. It's all about soft skills - management skills, which in any managerial position are much more important than special knowledge.
Battle for budgets
There is no company that has enough budget for all projects and all departments. You always have to sacrifice something. Production, marketing, sales, development, HR, etc. are all applying for the same money. and so on. Everyone believes that it is he who brings/saves/reduces costs, etc. I hope you don’t think that the needs of sales people and production people are more important than your own? In the fight for budgets, appeal to the company’s future profits, return on investment, the amount of possible losses, and look for common interests with the heads of other departments. An IT manager in a company is a seller of IT services and IT projects, no less than a representative of a vendor or integrator.
Quick action in emergency situations
The white fur-bearing animal has a habit of sneaking up unnoticed. Problems can be technical, production, strategic, legal, related to adverse weather conditions, caused by a political shutdown in the country, publications in the media or social networks, etc. and so on. Only in a small number of cases will a company's problem be related to an incident in its IT systems. If the situation is related to IT in any way, you must propose a solution and have a plan of action for most critical situations. In all other cases, offer a solution if you can and act without waiting for someone else to take responsibility. And by the way, if we are talking about IT, then you should have
Engaging and motivating employees
In the triad “people, processes, technologies”, only the third part is about IT systems. The success of any IT project and the reality of any business process embedded in IT systems depends on how company employees accept IT technologies and the work scenarios offered to them. For example, it claims that a 0.1% increase in employee engagement at the electronics supermarket chain BestBuy increases store revenue by $100,000 per year. Maybe in your case the final figures will be different, but
Team building
Of course, the main people in the company are your IT team. An unflattering remark from your employee about the project being implemented in an informal conversation with colleagues from other departments, and the likelihood of success drops sharply. “Good” IT people often help themselves in building workarounds for automated processes and in building shadow IT systems.
The only way to avoid all this is to bring IT development plans to their attention, inspire them with your own enthusiasm, and show them the coolness and advantages of new products and approaches. Make your employees interested in success and they will help you get the rest of the team involved.
The ability to be responsible yourself and demand responsibility from others.
The manager said - the manager did. In fact, a very important quality in management, which allows you to rely on a person, which is very... All discussions can only take place when the problem is stated. If you have agreed to the plans, deadlines and budget, then be so kind as to keep your promises. If you follow this principle yourself, then it is natural to demand it from your team. Unfortunately, part of the leadership is confident that in business, as in the army, orders are not subject to discussion. This is not true, this is still part of the big corporate game - if you think that the task assigned to you cannot be completed within the time frames and budgets determined by management, then try to record your disagreement in writing and receive a written refusal from management. In the end, the only thing that matters is?
Keep your team away from corporate politics
IT specialists are employees with a fine mental organization. That's what a manager is for. IT managers should take a close look at IT management practices. The authors of ITIL are great masters in corporate games. SLA and all other ITSM practices are, first of all, an excellent cover for the IT team, which works great even in large corporations. Under the cover of documented ITSM processes, your teams and you will be completely safe from corporate battles and unreasonable pressure from other departments.
Build relationships with top management
Politics means, in any case, colleagues from other departments. A manager may refrain from participating in corporate politics, but he cannot be outside politics altogether. Moreover, IT projects are, in any case, something that directly affects all departments of the company. Therefore, build trusting and open relationships with management and colleagues. This will not save you from trying to “frame” the IT department, but well-meaning colleagues will listen to your arguments much more attentively.
Watch out for burnout
The performance of an IT professional greatly depends on his personal interest in the work. Unfortunately, over time. IT employees need new technologies, new tasks, and opportunities for professional development. And at the same time, you cannot work for a long time in a state of emergency and unrealizable tasks. An IT manager must monitor the condition of each of his employees, give them the opportunity to move away from emergency tasks, switch to something new or even more routine. Sometimes an extra day off or a trip to study will help you retain a valuable specialist on your team.
Clearly set tasks and define project goals
IT professionals are very creative. If there is an opportunity to misunderstand your task, they will find it. Any project will be implemented the way it is easiest to do, and not the way it should be. In any situation, a simple workaround will be found that will work forever. A good IT manager sets the task in such a way that it eliminates any ambiguity. If in a project you need to pay attention to the formal aspects of the process, documentation, technical requirements, this must be done explicitly. All this is the responsibility of the IT manager.
2013-10-10
Anyone who has ever taken part in the implementation of a software product or project is familiar with the eternal wars and misunderstandings between development teams and the managers leading the project.
To this day, one can encounter bewilderment among Russian developers in the style of: “Why is he needed, this manager?”
Let's figure it out: really, why?
Here it is appropriate to recall the classic book by Frederick Brooks, “The Mythical Man-Month, or How Software Systems are Created.” This book deduces Brooks' fundamental law:
If the project is not on time, adding more labor will delay it even further.
This is because in programming work cannot be divided arbitrarily into several independent parts: some tasks can be started only after others are completed.
Software product development is precisely the area where self-management and fraternal division of work into equal parts are impossible. This is how people appeared, torn between the client “I want” and the team “I can” - IT managers.
IT management, as a rule, refers to people known in the English-speaking environment as PMs: product managers and project managers.
There are only two categories of people employed in IT management:
A) people with programming/development/engineering experience
B) people who do not have programming/development/engineering experience.
Both cases have their own difficulties. It is believed that a non-IT person does not really understand the specifics of development. And an IT person doesn’t really understand people and the intricacies of sales.
Very few specialists can boast of serious experience in both areas. However, there are people who have real talent in managing product development. Suffice it to recall Steve Jobs, who was not a qualified engineer, but certainly knew a lot about the technologies used to create a product, and also understood the intricacies of how the intended product would be used by users.
The level of technical understanding required largely depends on the company. For example, companies that create technically loaded infrastructure products (for example, Heroku, Appcelerator, Akamai Technologies, Inc.) require technically savvy managers. Do managers of companies that focus on connections between users (Twitter, Quora, Tumblr) need serious technical skills?
So, we are faced with two questions:
Should an IT manager have development experience?
What skills does an IT manager need?
First, you need to decide on the functions of an IT manager.
What does an IT manager do?
determines the needs of end users of the proposed product;
defines the concept of the product, its goals, requirements for it;
develops a product implementation plan together with the development team;
builds a product distribution and pricing policy.
The main task of an IT manager comes down to planning, forecasting, and marketing of an individual company product at all stages of its development.
Which of the above requires programming experience?
You can even go further and say that for an IT manager it is better to have no programming experience at all than to “be able to do a little something.” Why? If a person does not have development experience, the ideas that are born in his head will not trigger the “it is difficult or impossible to do” trigger. Let these issues be decided not by the manager, but by the development team. The manager's task is to determine what users need from the product.
If a manager was once a developer, he can often filter his own ideas based on his own past experiences. Because experience is already in the past, it may be that good ideas are lost simply because they were not expressed. Moreover, one’s own experience can be a temptation when setting deadlines for completing a task, and from here it is not far to direct conflicts between the team’s assessments and the assessment of technical managers. Past experience may give rise to a desire to participate in the life of the team not as a leader, but as a performer. It’s bad when a manager starts using his experience not to quickly make the right decision, but to do something himself.
Therefore, once again: all implementation issues are resolved by the development team!
What non-technical knowledge might a technocrat who has chosen the path of IT management lack?
Experience with the product as a user. As a rule, developers get blinded and while solving complex problems they forget about what the final product will look like. This does not mean that programmers are devoid of a sense of beauty, but sometimes the sculptor, carried away by the fine processing of the folds in the drapery, forgets to look at his creation from a distance of several steps.
Analytics. One of the main tasks of a product manager is to evaluate a product’s function and identify its advantages and disadvantages based on the collected data. This requires some economic experience.
Building relationships. Communicating with investors, shareholders, clients, coordinating changes, and other communication tasks can be very challenging for the most experienced developers.
A view from another sphere. Yes, it is useful to crawl out of your shell to create a new product. It is difficult to do this if you are closely involved in one area.
On the other hand, an IT manager cannot do without the necessary set of technical skills. There is at least one important reason for this: you need to speak to techies in their language. Further, technical expertise can help reduce decision time and manage risk. A manager should not write code or design system architecture. But you just have to know the basics.
Spherical manager in a vacuum: what is he like?
If we put the whole picture together, we get the following skills that an ideal IT manager would want to have:
1. Non-technical skills:
Understand the meaning of user experience/user interface (UX/UI). At least at the everyday level. Where is the best place to place the kitchen in an existing apartment? What if it's a cafe? Where should the registration button be in the application? These are questions of the same category.
Be able to plan, schedule and document.
Be emotionally mature. Be able to motivate. Build relationships. To be honest. Control your emotions.
Know Agile and Lean methodologies.
Have experience in marketing and sales.
Have an idea
knowledge about the budget and its planning.
Be a leader.
2. Technical skills:
Understand the general principles of programming (variables, classes, subclasses, methods, etc.), the principles of constructing the architecture of software solutions. HTML, CSS, PL-SQL should not be foreign acronyms.
Have an understanding of API, continuous integration, automated testing, A/B testing, unit testing.
Have an understanding of several web development frameworks (Django, jQuery, Rails, Symphony) and mobile development platforms (PhoneGap, Titanium).
In general, it can be noted that the lack of technical knowledge is more than compensated for by patience and attentive attitude towards the team, and for their technical knowledge, engineers are ready to forgive their manager many management mistakes. The truth, as always, is somewhere in between.
As a result
A huge part of the work of an IT manager is external communication: meetings with clients, attending conferences; as well as solving internal issues: defining the concept, drawing up a roadmap, requirements, determining strategy, distribution and pricing policies. The IT manager is the end user's advocate who ensures that the product is simple and intuitive.
An IT manager is a Chinese wall for his team. One of its tasks is to remove all factors distracting from the main direction of work and protect its developers from unnecessary tasks coming from outside.
A good manager will always find time to improve his technical skills. A good developer will always find time to convey his idea to the manager.
IT managers are people who do not allow this to happen:
From this we can only draw one conclusion. Let's live in peace! (With)
IT project manager, business analyst, system analyst, system consultant, IT systems development specialist, system integrator, service manager, information systems designer, ERP manager - these positions are on the crest of a wave today all over the world.
Any IT company that carries out orders for domestic and foreign businesses is in dire need of an information resource management specialist who is able to optimize business processes using modern information technologies and configure the IT system in an optimal way taking into account the specifics of the business.
IT manager is a young profession, so read more about the tasks of a specialist...
The information systems management manager is involved in setting tasks, developing technical specifications, designing and developing IT systems. One of the main tasks of an IT manager is to select IT tools and justify their economic feasibility of use, i.e. essentially develop a business plan for implementation. A specialist must have a good understanding of the enterprise’s business, its strategy and innovation activities, determine how information resources can affect the company’s performance, and therefore have a good economic education. The IT manager is responsible to management for the competent and reasonable distribution of targeted funds, taking into account the need to increase the automation of all business processes of the company.
An IT manager must play a kind of role as a link between the developers of IT business support systems and the business community. In addition, in commercial IT companies, where the consumers of services are the company’s clients, the IT manager will also need commercial acumen, the ability to attract and retain a client, effective communication skills, focus on the client’s interests, organizational abilities, analytical and creative abilities. Thus, a good IT manager is a specialist with good economic, managerial and IT training.
The Institute of Business and Technology Management of BSU offers applicants a new specialty of higher education - “Information Resources Management” (qualification upon completion of training - “manager-economist of information systems”).
In the process of studying the specialty, students gain knowledge and professional competencies in the field of economics and management of information resources, as well as information systems and technologies. Future specialists will learn to administer system and network resources, manage the security of information resources, design the creation and use of information technology systems and maintain relevant project documentation.
Features of training in the specialty are
- in-depth study of economic and management disciplines, as well as IT technologies
- in-depth study and mastery of modern information technologies
- intensive study of English
The curriculum of the specialty includes economic disciplines (economic theory, organizational economics, financial management, etc.) and management disciplines (organization management, information management, IT project management, business process reengineering, etc.), IT disciplines (for example, design of information systems, programming technologies, database management, administration of information systems, etc.), English.
Graduates of the specialty “Information Resource Management” can work:
- system analysts of information resources
- business analysts
- consultants on economic and managerial issues of implementation and use of information resources
- managers for the implementation of new IT technologies and systems
- economists of the computing (information and computing) center
- heads of ACS departments
- developers and information systems support specialists
- specialists in design and reengineering of IT systems
- specialists in the field of information resource and systems management
- information systems administrators
Forms of obtaining higher education:
full-time, part-time, part-time (second higher, shortened)
Olga Shpuntenko,Leading consultant at KA "Vis-a-vis Consult"
The basis of modern dynamic business has become various information technologies, which are actively being implemented in all areas of entrepreneurship.
The IT manager’s task is to select the automation tools necessary for the enterprise while minimizing the cost of time and resources for their development, configuration and implementation. In particular, he is responsible for automating areas such as management of network equipment, servers and corporate applications, data storage and security, personal computer fleet management and help desk management.
This position has two main components - technological and social management. On the one hand, it is necessary to introduce an information system at the enterprise that best satisfies the needs of users; on the other hand, it is necessary to explain its structure and functions, teach the rules of use, distribute duties and areas of responsibility among personnel to maintain its functionality.
In addition to higher (technical) education and experience in the field of information technology, the following personal requirements are imposed on the IT manager:
- systematic analytical mindset;
- the ability to prove and defend one’s point of view;
- understanding the essence of information processes and end user problems;
- ability to combine automation strategy and self-organization of automation work.
- introduction of advanced information technologies to automate enterprise management;
- using a minimum of IT tools to achieve automation goals;
- creating a culture of corporate work for users.
Requirements for IT managers
On June 4, 2007, the Steering Committee of the project to develop professional standards approved the qualification requirements that can be presented to an information technology manager.The Management Committee sets professional standards for the most popular professions in the field of information technology (these are positions, professional competencies, requirements for educational levels, work experience and certification) - for example, programmer, system architect, database administrator, etc. Representatives of the most famous and influential IT companies in Russia took part in their development, so you can confidently rely on these requirements for specialists.
The creators propose to use the standard as a regulatory document applied:
- for selection and placement of personnel;
- for planning and rationing of labor;
- for the development of personnel management systems;
- to solve problems in vocational guidance;
- to create a system of voluntary certification of personnel and assess the level of competence of workers;
- to develop educational standards and training programs in accordance with the requirements of employers;
- for professional training, retraining and advanced training of personnel.
- on the Labor and Civil Codes;
- about business communication;
- about the basics of psychology and conflictology, pedagogy (methods of adult education), economics, marketing, management, personnel management;
- about decision-making methods;
- on the principles of planning, financial management of the organization's resources, office work, and management control.
What does the coming day have in store for us?..
The report "The New Chief Information Officer - Exploring the Changing Role of the Chief Information Officer" by London Business School and Egon Zehnder International describes quite well how the role of the IT manager has changed over the past five years.Based on this report, some conclusions can be drawn about how this role may change over the next few years.
What do researchers expect from information technology managers in the near future? IT professionals will have to master two relatively new roles. The first is the “master of change”: a leader in organizing, managing and supporting change in the business sector. The second and most important role is the “business strategist”: a person who directly influences the enterprise development strategy, is responsible for the technological aspects of e-commerce, etc. As we can see, the impact of the changes was manifested in the emergence of new roles for the IT manager, and these roles were transferred to him from the general management of the organization.
Requirements for directors of information services (for their qualifications) can be reduced to four points:
- they must be well versed in technology;
- be service-oriented;
- have strategic planning abilities;
- be ready for change.
The report indicates that information service managers spend approximately half of their working time on establishing external contacts (working with information technology suppliers, participating in solving problems related to the integration of information technology into production, business modernization, participation in strategic planning). And the share of this part of the work will grow.
The researchers were able to identify factors that are decisive for the successful activity of the head of an information service. There are fourteen such factors. Among these factors:
- the ability to build relationships with senior management and gain their trust;
- creation of a high-quality information technology management team;
- quick response to emerging needs and wishes of employees and management;
- openness and honesty regarding the capabilities and functioning of information technology;
- maintaining a reputation for reliable service;
- having a reputation as a person who understands business, etc.
CISO Models
And lastly, regarding the impact of changes on representatives of IT management of organizations and the formation of a manager of the 21st century. What is the ideal model of a chief information officer?Four ideal models of the information service director of the new millennium have been formulated. The most preferred model, chosen by 41% of respondents, is “a leader with IT experience and management experience, capable of shaping business strategy and supporting IT, who loves his job.”
However, the most likely, although less desirable, model for the study participants seems to be in which the functions of the information service director are performed by two people: “one person is engaged in solving strategic problems and modernizing production, paying more attention to information and systems than technology and infrastructure, and the other takes on the responsibilities of technology director, looking after technology, infrastructure and production processes.”
The third model is “a director who has good technical knowledge and is primarily involved in the problems of technical support, maintenance and development of systems, the creator of a powerful infrastructure, a long-lived IT worker.”
The fourth is “a universal manager, a manager by education, who has reliable assistants - technicians, who is also engaged in the development and modernization of the business and has good prospects for career growth.”
Let's sum it up
Today, IT specialists must remember two components - directly technical and, of course, managerial. Unfortunately, IT managers often forget about the influence of the human factor on solving technical problems.While the information revolution is unfolding, another, no less significant process is in full swing - a revolution in the methods of doing business. The paths of the information revolution and the business revolution will cross sooner or later, but the question is, will IT specialists find themselves at this intersection?
The confluence of these two revolutions requires IT to take on a new role. IT professionals are no longer purveyors of arcane technological artifacts. Now they are required to do something more complex than just setting up applications. They will have to abandon their own, incomprehensible language, subculture and abbreviations. Business expects something new from IT - consistency. Businesses want IT to align with their needs at all levels: strategic, tactical and operational. IT must deliver business results. Because they view the world from their unique perspective, IT must lead the business calmly and implement stable systems without unnecessary fuss.
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