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IT Manager's Handbook
An anonymous reader writes "I have managed a lot of technical people in my career, and one thing I know: managing geeks is hard. Rewarding, interesting, challenging — and hard. Hard to do well. Dealing with all of the complexities of a modern IT environment is extremely difficult. There is precious little time, even less (skilled) help, and many, many "mission-critical" demands. This book is written for that over-worked, tech-savvy (and perhaps business newbie) IT Manager (and IT Manager wannabee.) It discusses both sides of the IT department equation: both the technical, as well as the business issues. It talks about not only how to write a good SLA but also how to avoid burnout in your employees." Read below for the rest of the review.
IT Manager's Handbook 2nd Edition
author
Bill Holtsnider and Brian D. Jaffe
pages
589
publisher
Morgan Kaufmann
rating
8
reviewer
anonymous
ISBN
012370488X
summary
discusses both the technical and business side of being an IT manager
This book has 20 chapters that discuss both the concepts and the details about critical IT tasks. The first ten chapters discuss the Business of Being an IT Manager: What is an IT Manager?, Managing Your IT Team, Staffing your IT Team, Project Management, Changing Companies, Budgeting, Vendors and Their Products, IT Compliance and Controls. The second ten chapters discuss The Technology of being an IT Manager: Getting Started with the Technical Environment, Operations, Physical Plant, Networking, Security, Software and Operating Systems, Enterprise Applications, Storage and Backup, User Support Services, Websites, User Equipment, Disaster Recovery.
Back in the day, IT was a relatively well-defined activity. Not a lot of people knew about it, it was complex but pretty isolated, and there was precious little "interaction" (interference) with the business side of an organization. When I started managing, there was the technical side and everything else. Now things are very different. IT Managers not only need to have the latest patches installed on the network but they also need to know the five standards steps in project management. They have to know to write a disaster recovery plan as well as what the relative value of a certification is, what phishing is as well as what not to ask in a job interview.
The concepts discussed in this book are relatively classic; the principles of project management, implementing physical security or estimating costs for a budget are not new areas. The authors discuss these topics with a lot of hands-on detail, specific information that a manager can grab quickly. This book let me read ten pages on "Change Management," for example. I knew what change management was, but I needed more that a buzzword before I met with my boss. This book gave me enough detail to talk about it.
From the preface: "We wrote the book for new IT managers and future IT managers. Much of the material in this book will be familiar to experienced IT managers — those people who have been managing IT departments since the space program in the 1960s. But for many individuals, the late 1990s and early 2000s have brought a radical change in responsibilities with little or no help along with it." While that is not me, that is a lot of people I know and have worked with. They got shoved into management because they knew what a "service pack" was and the previous IT manager had left. One minute they were connecting CAT 5 cables and the next minute they are in a ten-person meeting trying to explain why the department needs two new server racks, and two more servers, and two more service techs and three more fill-in-the-blank.
It can be a challenge to make text about operating systems interesting, but I liked their comparison of the Linux/open source and/or Windows discussion. They point out the strengths and weaknesses of each. There are Pro/Con tables scattered throughout the book that I like a lot. Give me the facts, and I'll make up my own mind.
I don't want to say I could not put the book down, because I could. It's designed to let me. I can jump in, get the data I need ("What does ILM stand for again, and what is it?") and jump out. With a fourteen page, two-column Index, a Glossary and each of the chapters ending with both websites and book citations, I can find the stuff I need quickly.
Most individuals in IT today could benefit from a book like this. No one knows everything, and most people don't even know the range of what they are supposed to know. This is a good book for the current IT manager — there are going to be some topics that they are not familiar with, such as the details of Compliance. It is also a good book for a person that wants to or thinks they want to be an IT Manager. He or she can read through this book and determine, if these are the kinds of issues they want to deal with daily.
You can purchase IT Manager's Handbook 2nd Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This book has 20 chapters that discuss both the concepts and the details about critical IT tasks. The first ten chapters discuss the Business of Being an IT Manager: What is an IT Manager?, Managing Your IT Team, Staffing your IT Team, Project Management, Changing Companies, Budgeting, Vendors and Their Products, IT Compliance and Controls. The second ten chapters discuss The Technology of being an IT Manager: Getting Started with the Technical Environment, Operations, Physical Plant, Networking, Security, Software and Operating Systems, Enterprise Applications, Storage and Backup, User Support Services, Websites, User Equipment, Disaster Recovery.
Back in the day, IT was a relatively well-defined activity. Not a lot of people knew about it, it was complex but pretty isolated, and there was precious little "interaction" (interference) with the business side of an organization. When I started managing, there was the technical side and everything else. Now things are very different. IT Managers not only need to have the latest patches installed on the network but they also need to know the five standards steps in project management. They have to know to write a disaster recovery plan as well as what the relative value of a certification is, what phishing is as well as what not to ask in a job interview.
The concepts discussed in this book are relatively classic; the principles of project management, implementing physical security or estimating costs for a budget are not new areas. The authors discuss these topics with a lot of hands-on detail, specific information that a manager can grab quickly. This book let me read ten pages on "Change Management," for example. I knew what change management was, but I needed more that a buzzword before I met with my boss. This book gave me enough detail to talk about it.
From the preface: "We wrote the book for new IT managers and future IT managers. Much of the material in this book will be familiar to experienced IT managers — those people who have been managing IT departments since the space program in the 1960s. But for many individuals, the late 1990s and early 2000s have brought a radical change in responsibilities with little or no help along with it." While that is not me, that is a lot of people I know and have worked with. They got shoved into management because they knew what a "service pack" was and the previous IT manager had left. One minute they were connecting CAT 5 cables and the next minute they are in a ten-person meeting trying to explain why the department needs two new server racks, and two more servers, and two more service techs and three more fill-in-the-blank.
It can be a challenge to make text about operating systems interesting, but I liked their comparison of the Linux/open source and/or Windows discussion. They point out the strengths and weaknesses of each. There are Pro/Con tables scattered throughout the book that I like a lot. Give me the facts, and I'll make up my own mind.
I don't want to say I could not put the book down, because I could. It's designed to let me. I can jump in, get the data I need ("What does ILM stand for again, and what is it?") and jump out. With a fourteen page, two-column Index, a Glossary and each of the chapters ending with both websites and book citations, I can find the stuff I need quickly.
Most individuals in IT today could benefit from a book like this. No one knows everything, and most people don't even know the range of what they are supposed to know. This is a good book for the current IT manager — there are going to be some topics that they are not familiar with, such as the details of Compliance. It is also a good book for a person that wants to or thinks they want to be an IT Manager. He or she can read through this book and determine, if these are the kinds of issues they want to deal with daily.
You can purchase IT Manager's Handbook 2nd Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Information Lifecycle Management. :)
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
You can't really teach those people.
"Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them."
Destory their ability to advance until they realize (or you can successfully explain) that there is more than one way to do things.
I work w/ XP, run a Mac at home (yuck) and keep my data on BSD boxes. I find the solution to the problem. Open source or closed, the solution must fix my problem.
I use to be a Windows only guy until I ran into different problems.
Right here:
/ description/se/829-1998_desc.html
http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/std_public
(For those who didn't know, yes they really exist.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How do you avoid the pitfalls of employment law that state you can't not hire(*) someone based on certain personal traits
IANAL, but AFAIK there is no law that I've ever heard of that makes personality a protected category, at least not in the United States.
Protected categories that I'm aware of include race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, physical disability, and things of that nature. Technical skills aren't a protected category either; that is, there's no law that says you have to hire the most technically qualified person[1], without regard to other factors. If you sue because you think a less qualified candidate was hired over you (and generally, you'd have know way to know; no company will tell you anything about any of the other applicants), you probably wouldn't have a chance. If someone were going to try that approach, they better also be in some protected category and claim "They didn't hire me because I'm _______" instead. And then, they'd better hope the company isn't filled with people in the same category. Being in the San Francisco area, which is extremely diverse in every way imaginable, I expect we could deflect any kind of claim like that easily.
In at least one instance, I passed over someone with a graduate degree for someone who didn't even have a degree. He was a self-taught programmer with little formal education in the subject, but was very sharp and had written a well-regarded BASIC library for gaming. He was a terrific addition to the team on both the technical and personal levels, and no one (not even HR) questioned why I wasn't hiring the guy with the master's in CS. I told my boss "This is my pick" he did a short second interview himself, then signed off on it. If there was anything wrong with that, I'm sure HR or Legal would have said something.
[1] There may be different rules on this for managers at government agencies; I once applied for a job at a county government (looking back, I'm very glad I wasn't hired) and took what was basically a civil service exam for mainframe computer operators. In that kind of environment, I imagine a manager's hands might be a lot more tied WRT who they can hire. Even then, if the most technically qualified person is not in a protected category and the person you really like is, then you're probably gold.