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Evaluating the Performance of an IT Department?
Daniele Pagano asks: "I have just been promoted from code monkey to manager of the IT department of a construction subcontractor. As far as this industry goes, we are relatively high-tech (and getting better), but like many IT departments we are often considered a necessary money 'black hole' (i.e. they just notice the outages). So one question that arises is: how do we actually value our work? That is, how much money are we actually saving the company, and how do we demonstrate it to them? How do we value the contributions of each IT staff member (say, for a bonus or raise) in an objective, quantifiable manner? I know there is no one correct answer, and I have many ideas, but I thought we could pull our thoughts together for the betterment of small IT departments everywhere."
Tom Demarco, et. al, covered this in, "Peopleware"
You need to figure out what benefits you bring to your company vs. what costs
your company would bear w/o you.
If you have the time, read "Peopleware." (it's not a very long read) If not, figure out what it would cost to outsource you. Keep in mind that a lot of outsourced support ends up under "capital or recurring expenditures" rather than "personnel costs."
In our industry, it seems that on the average of 6-8 years, some bean-counter in the company says, "we're an XYZ-company, not a communications/high-tech/software/ technology company." Then, cut-backs start, out-sourcing starts, costs soar and after a very painful 4-6 years, they start hiring people back to run the soft underside of the company.
Construction might be in a big downtrend in a few months.
n t/story/14068443p-14899146c.html
Sales of new houses fall 57%
Region's builders try to lure buyers with lower prices and free upgrades.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/homes/re_news/v-pri
...noone will be quite sure you've done anything at all. Good IT, I mean really good IT, will be a whole lot of nothing. You can value an IT department by just how little they have to do, because if they have done it right, there will very very little, beyond patching now and then, for them to actually do durning the day. Of course this isn't true when you upgrade systems, but in general, you should measure them not by how much they did, but by how much they didn't do.
So, instead of saying "Joe fixed three server meltdowns this week, good job, here is a raise!" go with "Joe's machines haven't needed maintenence for three years, here is your raise!"
If you want my advice (and why wouldn't you? ;-), I'd do a poll of other departments to see what they think of IT. Talk to everyone from the office grunt to the VP of department X, and take the temperature of your department. Don't be afraid to get beat up, and then go back and do some soul searching on the stuff that people don't like about you. Then go back out to these same folks and let them know what you're doing to solve their problems, and be sure to point out that you know your mission is to help them get their jobs done.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Once you followed through that your job is real easy - every single person that has not quit yet, is so bad that they can't leave your shop. You can just all rate them as underperformers.
But just in case your question was meant seriously here is a less sarcastic answer. Remember, Management doesn't produce anything. Management is useless overhead unless it is put to work _for_ the people that actually produce the product the customer is asking for. So ask your staff what they would need from their management to be more productive. If they can answer that question, then they care and try to do a good job. If they don't have an answer, they don't care.
Peter.
The one thing that stood out for me is education of your employers. Get them to know the value of what you do by...teaching them..somehow.
Ok ok, so maybe that's easier said than done. But if they're only looking at the bottom line (money in, money out), you won't get the respect that one deserves..
Death by snoo-snoo!
Just pull the plug on IT and see how much the business looses. Maybe then they'll appreciate you more.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Is with uptime.
In fact, I bonus my people based on uptime and it works remarkably well.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
So one question that arises is: how do we actually value our work?
The way you value your work is by expressing how much cost you have kept the company from otherwise spending. If you had unlimited time to evaluate, you could go out and see how many dollars the company would have to spend to have someone come in and support every project you support, with the same level of response that you have.
Demostrating it is less easy, especially if there aren't any renovations you can do to immediately save your company money (that is, the job has been done right already.)
How do we value the contributions of each IT staff member (say, for a bonus or raise) in an objective, quantifiable manner?
Decide on a perfomance metric that you can objectively measure for each task. A web developer should be rated differently than a tech support person, for example. Metrics should preferrably be such that a tech trying to game the numbers will be working more like your ideal employee (i.e., instead of looking at "time to close ticket", look at "time to first response" and "satisfaction of non-IT")
You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.
No, we're in Arizona. Californians can't move here fast enough :)
The cookie told me to.
I see parallels between the IT field and my own (communications, as in PR, not telcom) because, while you can come up with certain measurements, they mean very little in the end. This is because most of the people who matter don't understand what you do anyway. What they know is leadership, management and teamwork, and IT and communication departments many times really are black holes in these areas. I've been a couple of places where the only reasons people put up with IT and PR is that they don't understand computers and they're afraid of the media.
On the PR side we have a concept called the dominant coalition. I just means the group of people who dominate the organization (it's usually more than just the boss, and rarely mirrors the organization chart exactly). Do a little strategic communications research on them: figure out what they like, how they talk, what they value and how they do things. Then get on board as much as your field and personal ethics will allow. You don't have to go whole hog sycophant, either. Just find out what's important to them and do the things you feel comfortable doing -- learn their staff work, wear "management" clothes, take a couple business courses to learn the lingo. Just remember that sometimes the leader has to take one (or several) for the team. You might have to buy a couple sport coats to wear to meetings so you can better represent your guys while you're there. And it all counts in the end -- how you work, your personal habits, etc. Yeah, it's not fair, but it's fact.
You're not trying to build up brownie points, either. You're trying to do two things, really: show them you're part of the team, and build up enough credibility so they're open to your education and ideas. If you really, really want to resist becoming a "suit," or whatever you want to call it, you might consider telling them you'd rather go back to being a code monkey. You've taken on a responsibility, and most of earning your money now comes down to two things: taking care of the boss and taking care of your guys. There's nothing wrong with wanting to stay on the technical side. There's only something wrong with taking the management money, sitting in the management seat and keeping your head on the technical side. You're screwing your boss and your guys.
Once you build up some credibility, you can educate them slowly and carefully about what you do and what you can do. For most people, getting down to the nitty gritty with IT guys is like listening to Geordi LaForge. It's all tachyons and sub-space transmissions. And most IT guys, I must say, seem to cultivate that. As I made my personal journey from a Mac user who was happy to fiddle with themes to a Slackware user who built his own boxes, I discovered what bullshitters many IT guys were. Not that they were evil or lazy, just that they had a perfect cover for continuing to do what they preferred to do, or not taking on something they didn't want to, or for getting money they didn't really need. And while they got away with it quite a bit, people knew. They could rarely pin the IT guys down enough to enforce their will, but in the backs of their minds they knew. That also explains a lot of seemingly capricious decisions: the management just doesn't trust you, and can't base denial on a deep understanding of what you do, so it denies things on whim or intuition, which is sometimes quite wrong. But bullshitters bring it on themselves.
Anyway, as you educate, get your guys on board with the rest of the team. Go where they're going, and don't just be the slave standing in the back with the emergency oar repair kit. Row. Figure out a way. If you take the previous poster's advice and start to get noticed for the fact things run so well you're not terribly busy, manage by walking around. Stop by some drone's desk and ask how you could help him more.
And lastly, remember you're in a service industry. Don't let the hardware fool you. You're the guys who keep the computers and the Internet working. T
You COULD lok at industry metrics for efficiency and look at why you have a higher efficiency with senior management, and discuss how that fits into IT's contribution.
You could also look at the applications you run and how they contribute to the bottom line (change-order programs, especially). You can TALK to employees and management in the office and find out how you can help. (No frigging surveys!)
But, the most effective approach is going to be to figure out how to help the foremen in the field get their job done as efficiently as possible. Find out who is the best, most organized foreman, and look for ways to automate things he does on paper. Talk to the least organized (but not just a good-guy talker) person and see if any tools could get things under control.
Think about things like (say) a nokia 770 webpad- can that help the foreman when he isn't in the trailer? What applications could he use?
Of course, the person to really lead this type of operation is the construction management, but you can always directly support their needs, or try an initial investigation...
If you really want to help the company, get people out of the server room and finding out people's needs.
When the users are satisfied with the job done by ITD you are about ~80% from a successful goal. The other 20% are value for money or $ goals met. imho.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
That has to be some of the best advice I've ever read online.
A few things I'd like at add:
First, if you stay in management, read about it. You can't be an effective programmer unless you understand your tools. You can't be an effective manager unless you do the same. Commit to reading at least one hour a day from a management book. Start with "7 Habits" and then progress to "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done". After that, just browse similar areas and try to soak in as much as possible.
Second, do some traditional baselining. How many outages do you work a week? How many lines of code or milestones have you reached? Are you on or ahead of schedule? Are you under budget? Work on taking geeky information and presenting it to your boss in a money-based manner. Show him how you need overtime to patch the WMF exploit or the company could potentially lose hundreds of hours of computer time.
Third, look at streamlining the processes. Don't think of it as a "do more with less" scenario. Just look at your teams and make sure they do their thing really well. In fact, you should make your teams focus on obtaining excellence. You will have to realign the values of your people so that they actually have the desire to do the best job possible.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
You sound like the codemonkey who recently became the 'IT-manager' at my office. He turned from a nice guy to a complete asshole overnight...
1 : become IT-manager
2 : become a complete asshole
3 : treat your former peers like they are a bunch of kids
4 : ???
5 : profit !
Baselining and measurement are key to the day-to-day operational management of any group, not just IT, and while it can become a very difficult task to define those measurements, it can build major credibility with other managers in the company if you can provide a clear picture on how the department is functioning and where improvements are being made.
Another challenge altogether is how to prioritize the IT department's request backlog. Do you have senior management prioritize tasks above a certain level of effort/risk? Do you implement a chargeback system to make other departments bear the cost of those "gotta haves"?
I've seen a few different approaches to this, and feel that a chargeback system is helpful in trimming the junk work out of the backlog. The trick, however, is implementing a time-tracking & billing process that places as small a burden as possible on the IT staff, but provides visibility to what's being done and for whom.
There's a zillion other issues as well, and there are plenty of good suggestions getting posted here. I've got a new organization to set up as well in the coming months, so it's nice to get some useful input.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
This is definitevely good as far as IT goes, but as a construction company only a fraction of our business is in the office (450 field people, 50 office, 3 IT), the rest is guys digging trenches and pouring concrete... For example, one of our great successes last year was not getting better servers and dramatically increase uptime and all kinds of good IT things, but was spending a couple of days writing a small Access app to import budgets from one system to another via ODBC so we can tell if we are losing money on the field or not.
It sounds like you've got 400 guys in the field [most of whom don't use IT], and about 50 guys [-n- gals] in management who do use IT. Your IT department is 3 people, i.e. you've got a working ratio of about 50 to 3, and you outsource development
Now consider the days that the three of you worked last year:
Of those, only "a couple of days writing a small Access app" were really fruitful; much of the rest may very well have been a waste of money.So it's entirely possible that your company could get by on maybe one grunt [to push the extremely critical Microsoft updates on the first Tuesday of every month], and then maybe some fraction of a year's worth of a consultant to coordinate the outsourcing and to throw together the occasional Access app.
I.e. a bean counter might say that they should fire one employee outright, and fire you as well, but keep you on retainer as a "consultant" for 3 to 6 months a year. On paper, it might save them a good $150,000 per year.
Now of course, they may try a stunt like that, and discover that you guys were worth your weight in gold, but, as they say, experience comes from making mistakes...
On the other hand, they may try a stunt like that and discover that you really were dead weight after all.
Anyway, moral of the story is that you must never be afraid to ponder some ugly truths like these.
Schedule a day (or a few) where all computers will be shut off. No, really - you'd be amazed at how cooperative some companies would be with a Disaster Recovery Drill. If they're not willing to go that far, you probably shouldn't have to go any further.
Drum out the costs of not having organized IT or key computer systems: rampant viruses, spyware, and incompatabilities.
But if that won't fly, start calculating how much time would be lost by not having things fixed or working properly. Take a stroll through your helpdesk logs and/or remind your people to jot down things like, "My computer has been taking 15 minutes to boot for the past two weeks," or, "I've spent an hour trying to figure this out," and estimate how much longer they would have put up with it if not for IT.
Winners tell stories while losers yell deal.
I run a small IT department at a construction company.
Every once in a while management decides to evaluate my department by hiring an IT company to have a look at my department.
That way they'll get a thirth party view that they "trust".
And I encourage them to do this! Therefore I always fully cooperate by showing them [the thirth party] everything I have running and how I'm handling things.
In the end, my own way of handling things always tends out to have to best price/value comparison.
After that, they'll always let me handle things my own way and give clearance to my projects whithout much hassle.
Management will never fully trust your own numbers, because it's just too easy to fiddle with the numbers and just make it seem like the way you're doing things is the best way.
The only real way you can do this is to document the hell out of everything you do in the IT department. You can do this on paper, but it is infinitely easier to do this with a customised software suite, consisting of job tracking, asset management, employee scheduling, and reporting modules (among others). If you don't have an integrated suite of such software (and it must be well integrated, otherwise it is useless), you are going to find that to obtain such software will be an expensive task (there is a reason Oracle bought Peoplesoft - not that I would reccommend Peoplesoft as a solution). There are some open-source solutions that handle portions of those tasks, but none (that I am currently aware of) that perform all four at once. Furthermore, regardless of the source of the solution, each installation is different, and generally requires custom modifications to handle differences in workflow, which won't be cheap regardless of platform. Designing such a system is a possibility, if you have the staff, but I must warn you that it is a complicated task, and you may end up spending as much on a in-house solution as you do with a pre-built (and customised) one. Which is why, if you don't have one, I reccommend getting a system working on paper first, just so you can see how your process works before encoding it (or having it encoded) in software (in fact, if all businesses did this, they would be better off, but I digress).
Basically, you want to first track all of the company's IT assets - what they are, where they are located, how they depend on each other, who are using them, notes about problems (or suspected problems), serial and model numbers, depreciated value, replacement cost, history of service and what for, etc. You want to keep an up-to-date network block diagram (which you should have if you don't already). Ideally, this diagram would be an inherent property of the asset tracking module, so it can be generated on the fly from information stored about the assets. The asset tracking module thus serves as a record of the IT assets, for security and value purposes (serial numbers and images of equipment for police, value and replacement costs allow for calculations for insurance purposes), as well as for tracking a history of costs associated with servicing that equipment. These costs should be stored in both real costs (ie, costs from the budget for new parts or equipment), as well as "hidden" costs (ie, how much it would have cost to have it serviced by an outside company vs doing it in-house). If you can show that over the course of a month, that your department is spending less to service and keep the assets running than it would cost via an outside source (and you must use realistic numbers here), then you can show the value of those actions. Furthermore, having the inventory of assets will show your managers and other higher-ups in the company just how much money (in terms of assets) they have invested in IT. It may also show you where there are unecessary and redundant assets, which can be trimmed (and/or repurposed) to save (or even make) the company money.
Once you have this system down, you need to then be able to track jobs (problems and tasks) relating to those assets. These are things which are submitted to your department (or that you find yourself - it is important to self-schedule jobs as well, even if they affect IT only!) as problems in the IT system, or as new developments. Whether it is somebody's computer that is spontaneously rebooting, or someone that needs a piece of software installed, or a new printer is needed, or the copier is jammed, etc - you need to track this. You need to track which asset(s) the job affects, who is assigned to the job (one or more people), what the t
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I, too, work for a construction company, specifically, a roofing company with over 200 employees. As you are aware, we have about 25% of these employees actually in the office while the other 75% are out on the roofs. I run a one-man IT department, but have also attempted to get myself included in some aspect of every part of the organization. This makes me a valuable commodity and ensures job security. I agree with postings that reference how the IT department could be valuated on the amount of actual down time compared to the time spent working. I always recall a saying that "I don't get paid for what I do, but rather, I get paid for what I CAN do". Take the first time the network goes down and those 50 employees can't work in the office. Take the amount of money each of these employees get paid per hour and how many hours the system could or may be down for. Now, consider how much the IT department is worth in these terms and what it would have cost the company if these individuals weren't at the top of their game. A Server, $2,000 An IT professional on staff, $25/hour, The first time the server goes down, the $1 million sales proposal is due in the next 10 minutes and stored on the server, the IT professional revives the server and retrieves the file--- Priceless. I know that outsourcing is always an option, but consider that keeping an IT person on staff is not a high price to pay for the ability to tap into their knowledge on a moments notice. I can't provide you an actual return on investment formula that could be used to calculate the valuation of an IT department (I don't know if anyone can), but I know I have my employees crying when something is wrong and they can't fix it on their own.
I hate to document more then the next guy. Documentation is my least favorite thing to do in IT. But... It is the only way that we have proof that we actually did something. Every time there is a problem have some method of keeping track of it. Either via a bug track program or what ever else. After you hot swap out a drive before the other one dies, document it. If all the other business units get infected with a virus except for yours, Document it. For the next year compare the previous years documents with this years that way you can judge if you are better then the previous or not.
Here is an example where one can prove their worth.
Mr. A. and Mr. R. works as a consultant/contractor for 2 different but similar small manufacturing company, with say 4 Windows Servers, and about 30 Windows Desktop and 4 Engineering Workstations with Windows. The corporation edict is that all business units will use windows rightly or wrongly, that is the law, and they have their own IT staff a thousand miles away checking on the network to make sure of this, also to isolate their problems.
The manufacturing company wants to save money so they both say we want you here only one day every 2 weeks (Because management only notices outages ever 2 weeks and needs to call someone to fix it.).
When Mr. A. and Mr. R. both start work they realize that IT Demand is much higher then the management expected.
Mr. A. Documents all his work and shows everything that he did that day, and what he needs further to do. Mr. R. just stated that he was there that day, but did the same things.
After a couple weeks both Mr. A. and Mr. R. realized that in order to keep the factory running they need to be there twice a week to keep up with the demand, updates, fixing laptops that users brought home on an unprotected network, dead drives and upgrades to computers, and cleaning out the metal shards that were sucked in by the computer fan from the factory floor.
So Mr. A. and Mr. R. goes to the company management and tries to explain they need more hours.
Mr. A. has a lot of documentation on everything he does and the value of it, and how it will keep things running smoothly and have all the employees focusing more on their work then their computer.
Mr. R. will have a much harder time with this. Because his work every 2 weeks turns the all day outage to a couple second blurp where no one noticed. Management figures that he can do his job in the time shown. The manager will take any of the off hand things that he needs to do as just marketing to get more money out of him.
Then when time continues because Mr. A. is there 4 times more often then Mr. R. he is able to completely solve the blurp. While Mr. R. factory suffers a major problem where Mr. R. is forced to spend 3 weeks nonstop fixing the problem causing his time and the time of the 40 employees, who cannot do their work without the computer systems.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Nice post but for the love of God drop the PR bullshit. I know it's your job but this is slashdot, we can read through it and it just gets our backs up.
"Get to know the people above and below you, it's your job to be a bridge and make it easy for both sides".
No market talk, to the point, no bullshit.
I like muppets.
Yeah, you're right of course. I don't talk that way in real life, but like any other specialist, I lapse into the lingo when I get going. But considering this is Slashdot, a favorite of geeks, who are known to use as much jargon and lingo as anybody, I'm only going to own up to the weakness, not apologize for it. It's karma, after all, to get back some of what you give.
Have everyone in IT take a sick day on the same day.
They'll understand immediately what value you bring.
The best way to get people to appreciate the value of an IT department is to keep everything working perfectly. People don't want lots of fancy features and knick knacks. They want to check their email and get online with no hassles.
The IT department I used to work for had a similiar problem. The powers that be saw IT as a huge waste of money, and everyone else scorned us. So we stopped focusing on adding features, and started focusing on stability and service. After that, our managment and users started seeing the IT department as a real asset, and actually increased our budget.
Register the editry.