Read Online IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done by Bill Holtsnider, Brian D. Jaffe - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bill Holtsnider, Brian D. Jaffe
Tags: General, Computers, Business & Economics, Information Management, Information Technology, Enterprise Applications, Databases, Networking
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didn’t get the rating he deserved on his last review, there’s not much you can do about that as a new manager. However, you can promise the employee that you will judge everyone fairly and objectively when you do performance reviews.
Other issues may require some follow-up. For example, if an employee says that he should have an office instead of cubicle, you can check with HR to see what the policy is. Maybe the employee is in a position that doesn’t merit an office, and you can explain the company policy. Perhaps they do merit an office, but there may not be one available right now. You can promise that offices will go to eligible employees, in order of seniority, when the space is available.
Some issues will require a longer term effort to deal with. If there are complaints about inequities in titles and salaries, for example, you may find that you agree with the people raising the issue. But correcting things of this nature will take time, careful planning, and perhaps some organizational upheaval.
Regardless of What Happens, Let Them Know You’ve Heard Them
The important things to remember as HR issues come your way are that each person deserves to know that they have your attention and that they each deserve a response. It may not always be a response that they like, but they each deserve one. You certainly don’t want to earn a reputation in your first weeks that you ignore things. You can promise the team that if they bring you an issue, you will get them an answer, but they need to know that sometimes getting that answer may take time, and sometimes that answer may be no.
Budgeting
One of the less exciting and less interesting parts of your job, but important enough to get its own chapter (see Chapter 6, Managing the Money, on page 161 ), is IT budgeting. Few departments will spend more money than IT, and it’s important that you become knowledgeable about your department budget. Since you aren’t likely to be held entirely responsible for a budget you didn’t create, you don’t have to start sweating over it right off—you’ll probably be given some leeway.
The easiest way to get started is to get a copy of your department’s current budget. Then you’ll want to ask Accounting for a report that indicates how much money your department is actually spending. By glancing at these reports you can quickly see which categories are the largest portions of the IT budget (and perhaps require the most scrutiny) and see where the biggest differences are between the actual spending history and what was budgeted. Make sure Accounting knows that you want to get all the budget reports for your department.
In general, you won’t be expected to explain every dollar. However, you will want to learn about those items that have the biggest impact on IT budgets and items with significant changes from year to year.
As you learn about the budget you inherited, you should be thinking about next year’s budget—the one you’ll be responsible for preparing, presenting, defending, and adhering to. As is typical, each year’s budget is compared to the previous year’s. It’s important that you make note of which items might go up so that you can explain them.
Making Those First Decisions
There’s a saying that “20 percent of life is what happens to you and that 80 percent is how you deal with it.” Another way to look at it is that your success is not much more than the cumulative results of the decisions you make.
Some decisions may be easy: “Can I leave a little early today?” Others could be more difficult: “Accounting is working on closing the books and won’t allow any downtime, but we need to take their database off line to run a maintenance routine to prevent it from getting corrupted.”
Anytime you make a decision, you want to make sure that it’s based on sound reasoning that you can later defend if necessary. You may get faulted for making a bad decision, but if it’s based on reasoned
Other issues may require some follow-up. For example, if an employee says that he should have an office instead of cubicle, you can check with HR to see what the policy is. Maybe the employee is in a position that doesn’t merit an office, and you can explain the company policy. Perhaps they do merit an office, but there may not be one available right now. You can promise that offices will go to eligible employees, in order of seniority, when the space is available.
Some issues will require a longer term effort to deal with. If there are complaints about inequities in titles and salaries, for example, you may find that you agree with the people raising the issue. But correcting things of this nature will take time, careful planning, and perhaps some organizational upheaval.
Regardless of What Happens, Let Them Know You’ve Heard Them
The important things to remember as HR issues come your way are that each person deserves to know that they have your attention and that they each deserve a response. It may not always be a response that they like, but they each deserve one. You certainly don’t want to earn a reputation in your first weeks that you ignore things. You can promise the team that if they bring you an issue, you will get them an answer, but they need to know that sometimes getting that answer may take time, and sometimes that answer may be no.
Budgeting
One of the less exciting and less interesting parts of your job, but important enough to get its own chapter (see Chapter 6, Managing the Money, on page 161 ), is IT budgeting. Few departments will spend more money than IT, and it’s important that you become knowledgeable about your department budget. Since you aren’t likely to be held entirely responsible for a budget you didn’t create, you don’t have to start sweating over it right off—you’ll probably be given some leeway.
The easiest way to get started is to get a copy of your department’s current budget. Then you’ll want to ask Accounting for a report that indicates how much money your department is actually spending. By glancing at these reports you can quickly see which categories are the largest portions of the IT budget (and perhaps require the most scrutiny) and see where the biggest differences are between the actual spending history and what was budgeted. Make sure Accounting knows that you want to get all the budget reports for your department.
In general, you won’t be expected to explain every dollar. However, you will want to learn about those items that have the biggest impact on IT budgets and items with significant changes from year to year.
As you learn about the budget you inherited, you should be thinking about next year’s budget—the one you’ll be responsible for preparing, presenting, defending, and adhering to. As is typical, each year’s budget is compared to the previous year’s. It’s important that you make note of which items might go up so that you can explain them.
Making Those First Decisions
There’s a saying that “20 percent of life is what happens to you and that 80 percent is how you deal with it.” Another way to look at it is that your success is not much more than the cumulative results of the decisions you make.
Some decisions may be easy: “Can I leave a little early today?” Others could be more difficult: “Accounting is working on closing the books and won’t allow any downtime, but we need to take their database off line to run a maintenance routine to prevent it from getting corrupted.”
Anytime you make a decision, you want to make sure that it’s based on sound reasoning that you can later defend if necessary. You may get faulted for making a bad decision, but if it’s based on reasoned
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