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.

Comments

Abridged version

[qwijibo]

The fortune at the bottom of the page when I read this review was "Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow." This seems to be the IT management strategy employed in many companies these days. I wonder if this $50 book covers this subject as well as the fortune cookie. =)

Re:Abridged version

[dreamchaser]

That's the common theme, but not always the case. A *truly* good IT Manager also manages client relationships and expectations to the extent that a decent product can be delivered within a reasonable amount of time and for a reasonable amount of money. I've found that managing customer expectations is every bit if not more important than managing your people.

Not all IT Managers have pointy hair...

In a nutshell

[Skadet]

Look, I've got lots of experience working with old-school businesspeople who value "face-time". Let me explain to them what's important:

Ready?

Results. That's it. Are projects done on-time? Up to standards? If so, don't bitch at me because I was 15 minutes late today. Maybe I was working on your project, maybe I was playing WoW. Whatever the reason, I work best between 11pm-2am. Those are my peak productivity hours, whether I'm writing songs, making headway in a game, or coding. But I'm also not real good at coming in at 7:30am.

I think IT managers need to realize that different people have different ways of working. If they could (or had the power) to leverage that, far more would get done in far shorter periods of time. If my boss came to me today and said, "Ok, you can telecommute 3 days a week. But if your productivity drops even a little, you're back here 5 days a week", I'd take it -- and they would see just how productive someone can be when you let them take on projects on their own terms.

Re:In a nutshell

[Jaeph]

I'm a big believer in flexibility in the IT field. Relaxed dress codes, flexible hours, etc. However, your point of view seems hopelessly self-centered and extreme.

"Results" is simply the start. I need people who are an active member of a team, who promote a friendly, helpful atmosphere. You should shower, come to work on time, keep abreast of situations, and be available.

To put it another way, for every self-centered,"results" person, I can find someone who produces results and shows up to work on time without excuses, and is good asset to the whole team.

-Jeff

Re:In a nutshell

[Jaeph]

So we are clear - I'm an old-school c programmer, a SQL programmer, an oracle DBA (I've used many RDBMS packages), RHCE, and generally unix-savvy. Not boasting, because anybody who posts here has this and more, but just indicating my bonafides. Also, I now refuse to become a manager. I will be a team lead, take charge in a crisis, substitute for mgmt in a pinch, but I will not accept a post as a manger. My few-year stint as a manager was not fun: I want to keep my hands dirty.

In the military, I would be a sergeant.

It's not a question of my "entrenched" view. It's a very, very educated view working at a large number of clients in many business, including a number of wall-street businesses. I've done the 70-hour a week thing. I've worked with the so-called geniuses who said that they couldn't get up early (and they didn't have WoW as an excuse either). I've seen how much the night owls produce.

It's not worth it, in every case. I'm not saying that the night-owl, anti-social types can't produce; I'm saying that for the same money you can always find someone else who can produce in the same ballpark, plus be available for team meetings, work with other people, appear in front of the client, etc.

You are like a designated hitter looking for a job in the National League. We got lots of hitters, but can you field too?

-Jeff

Re:What gives?

[nine-times]

Yeah, as an "IT manager" of sorts, my first thought on this was a question: is IT management really such a different process than management in general? I mean, forgetting the technical IT issues, is the management of an IT department different from the management of other departments?

Immediately, I answered myself "yes". Two big factors that change things:

1. those under you are probably autistic
2. those above you probably have little/no understanding of what your department actually does

Re:What gives?

[Skyshadow]

That's a rather redundant chapter title, don't you think?

Actually, upper management should be somewhat uninformed. I want my CTO thinking about budgets and etc rather than knowing too much about network setup -- aside from the fact that the ones who do know a lot of details being the ones who micromanage, I want them to take care of that sort of trash so I don't have to.

The trouble comes, of course, when upper management is uninformed *and* doesn't listen to the people they hired to take care of that sort of thing for them. Heck, I've had jobs where I felt like I needed to dress up like a consultant to get management to give me the time of day...

Re:What gives?

[qwijibo]

Correction:

2. those above you are probably sociopaths

This means that a good IT manager should be a autistic sociopath. At least that's my theory. I'll let you know how it works out. =)

Find satisfaction in work

[Awksjaw]

I think the most important thing with any job is to be able to look back at the end of the day and have some sense of satisfaction with the work you've done. In college, I used to work construction/concrete and have laid many of foundations, sidewalks, gutters...etc; and I enjoyed the job, regardless of the crap pay, because I could always look back and see the results of my labor. Now in IT, sometimes I have a hard time looking back at the end of every day and seeing the results of my work.

At the end of the day, managers need to let employees know that they make a difference; that they have contributed.

Re:Find satisfaction in work

[nine-times]

There was an article on /. a while back which said, basically, that workers are more productive when they feel that their work matters. Sure, sure, there are other factors, but apparently this factor has been highly underestimated. It's not always enough to know that you're being compensated through pay or other means. Appreciation (i.e. saying, "thanks, you did a good job") only goes so far. But if people really believe that there would be a big problem, or that people would suffer, if their job were not done properly, they're more likely to come through, they'll work harder, and they'll do a better job.

At least, that's a hybrid of the article and my own experience. I know I feel it sometimes. I realize sometimes that, at the end of the day, I've just shuffled some bits around, flipped 1s to 0s and vice versa. I've spent a lot of time making backups that are just going to be overwritten when no disaster occurs. The benefit of good IT work can be hard to quantify, since a lot of it is preventative (i.e. "no change" is a good result) and a lot it is only contingent (i.e. you only see it when something goes wrong). And to top it off, if you do a good job with the preventative side, things are less likely to go wrong, and you'll be less likely to see a payoff from your work on various contingencies.

So I guess I'm saying that, if you're a manager, try to keep in mind that you're employees might have a hard time with job satisfaction.

Try to find out "why".

[khasim]

I know it's not a new problem, but I've never worked out a good way to handle folks like this.

Okay, you've found the people that aren't complying with the project.

Now, find out why they aren't. This can be tricky. You don't want to TELL them that they have to (the implication being that they'll be fired, because they're probably pretty sure that they won't be). But you want to find out why they aren't using it.

I've gone through similar instances and it was usually about protecting turf.

Knowledge is power.

Knowledge shared is power lost.

Are they insecure about their skills? About their job? About the market? Or something else? Is it some reason other than insecurity? Is there a conflict in the department? Something else? Find out and keep an open mind about solutions.

Re:Everybody IT needs these skills, not just bosse

[dave562]

I know it's not a new problem, but I've never worked out a good way to handle folks like this.

You give them enough rope to hang themselves with, and then point out to key individuals in the organization that the person will hang themself. Then when it happens, make sure that you point your finger and tell them, "I told you so." The key element to making the whole strategy work is to make sure that you can recover for them, but make sure that the recovery isn't too easy.

Quick antecdote. I used to work in IS for a medical device manufacturer. The lead developer kept all of his work on his local hard drive and refused to put things on the server because his perception was that the server was unreliable. We told him, and told his boss that a good portion of the information that the company relies on was sitting on this guy's 2GB hard drive (it was 1996). He refused to back up and his boss didn't have enough command presence to make it happen.

Sure enough, the drive crashed and the company went into a panic. We told them, "told you so" and then proceeded to take their drive to the data recovery place. $2500 later, they had their data back. Not long after that, upper management decided to enforce a policy stating that all users must store their critical work to the servers so that it could be backed up on a nightly basis.

You too can become an IT Manager

[grudgelord]

Where are the chapters on "Managing Things You Don't Understand, with Authority" and "Second Guessing Those Who Understand It Better Than You"?

Over the past several years I've noticed a growth of IT Management out of decidedly non-technical disciplines such as sales, architecture (as in drafting), human resources, and a plethora of other "how do I delete my cache" disciplines. If I recall correctly, I've met one Manager who had a background in IT in the last two years. While I'll be the last to deny that it is possible to move laterally into a technical discipline, in almost every instance that I've witnessed, these faux IT Managers have sorely lacked in the necessary traits and understanding to adequately fulfill the responsibilities of their role. This commonly results in a department of bitter techs and engineers slaving to overcome the hurdles of an understaffed, under budgeted department while the management boob takes the pat on the back from upper.

I'm just not too sure how I feel about a book that has the potential to encourage yet more "non-techs" to move into a discipline they are ill equipped to comprehend, much less manage. It has nothing to do with the ability to "manage geeks", it's about the ability to manage the technology. Management plays the "geeks are hard to manage" card all to often to obfuscate their piss-poor grasp of the process of dealing with a technological infrastructure and they naturally assume that it's the "geek's" fault.

As an added caveat, this guide could also promote the principals du jour of IT Management, which have been developed from a managerial path-of-least resistance, pass-the-buck mindset, or watch-the-bottom-line paranoia (not to imply that budget consideration isn't a valid part of the job) rather than from actual methods designed to achieve security and efficiency in regular information systems operations.

On the flip side, if this book actually imparts the knowledge to enable individuals to develop their own management methods based on actual needs then it might be a good thing. And if all of the technical jargon and silly acronyms frighten the unqualified from other areas then all the better.

Re:You too can become an IT Manager

[MrR0p3r]

At my company we have many IT managers that aren't technically saavy. They may be able to speak the buzzwords and whatnot, but they can't sit down and write code if pressed to do so. And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. I'd rather not have a boss question me on why I wrote this function this way when the damn thing works. I'd also rather have a boss that is fantastic at dealing with people and at least acts like he actually cares about me as a person, and not just a resource.

If I have a coding question, we have technical leads. If I have a question about what I should do because my cube-mate keeps undressing me with her eyes, I have my manager. Two different roles, two different people. Works great.

That doesn't mean we don't have managers who can't be technical leads, but the technical leads don't always have management skills.

Geeks hard to manage? Since when?

[gujo-odori]

Not to take anything away from the book - I'm sure it's excellent - but I do have to question its basic premise that geeks are hard to manage.

They can be, like anyone else - but like anyone, that depends a lot on who you hire. I managed a staff of eight full-time developers and two interns, and to throw some extra complexity into the mix, they were all all at a location quite remote (~2000 miles) from my location and I only got to go out there about once every six months.

They were never hard to manage. Even the one who required the most management (and whom I might not have hired were it not for a particular rare skill that he had and we needed) was never a problem.

Why was this so? Because of how I hire. Technical chops matter, but personality fit with me, my other staff members, and with the corporate culture matter just as much. Probably more. If you don't fit in, no matter how good your technical chops are, you're never going to be right for the position and will probably need a lot more active management than people who do fit in.

As a result, my staff didn't need much active management. I positioned myself as a BS filter between them and corporate politics, so they could focus on the work, and I made sure they knew they were appreciated, got recognition, and could see the results of their work. And raises. I made sure they got good raises. Money may not be everything, but it matters.

My opinion is that if I hire someone who really needs to be "managed" I have made a mistake. Maybe I can get the person from there to a point of not needing to be managed much, but most probably I have made a mistake of personality fit, and those are hard or impossible to fix. My personality, the personalities of my existing staff members, the company's culture, and the personality of any new hire are all unlikely to change, so I'd better get it right at hiring. If I don't, I'll just need to re-fill that position after a while because no one will be really happy and it will eventually lead to a parting of ways.

In my experience, if you hire the right people and keep them as insulated as possible from BS, all you need to do is give them clear goals and get out of the way and they will meet and exceed them all.

Review of the review

[dogbowl]

Anyone else think this write-up is a little lacking. Its as if the author has barely mastered 9th grade English...

"This book gave me enough detail to talk about it."
"I don't want to say I could not put the book down, because I could."

I would expect this level of writing at Digg, but I've come to expect better at Slashdot....

Re:Everybody IT needs these skills, not just bosse

[bjourne]

Wait a minute.. so someone in upper-management decided that spending a few thousand bucks on a shiny new tool would be a good idea. Without asking about the opinion of those that should use this new tool? And you were tasked with executing the plan? It actually seems like you are the one who needs to change strategy. Try asking the devs that are supposed to use the new SCM system about what they think. Conversation is the first step in "handling people."

Plus, you didn't say what SCM it was, so it probably was ClearCase. In which case the developers definitely has the right to be very grumpy. :)

As far as I can tell, it's manging USERS not GEEKS

[wsanders]

I have never had an IT manager that has spent less than 10 times as much time managing the whining, crybaby, obnoxious users ("customers"), as managing technical talent. Unless the technical telent are idiots or sociopaths, that is, which occurs some of the time.

But mostly the job consists of drawing fire so the technical telnet can do their job, and I am eternally grateful to my better IT managers for doing that.