It can be a real challenge for a large organization to manage its IT operations when it doesn’t have the right fusion of people, an effective delegation of leadership, the appropriate set of tools and processes in place, and the correct type of environment and resources in place. As the organization grows, so does its needs, which introduces complexities in almost every area of IT operations, whether applications, infrastructure or the new project work itself.
In many typical cases, applications are developed in one department to meet its needs without a lot of planning. These grow exponentially until no department can effectively function without it, which requires an examination of why it was developed ‘on the fly’ in the first place. As problems stem from that, so does the problem of maintaining the disjointed application and its ever-growing and often troublesome database. On the infrastructure side, some organizations love recycling while some find it very difficult to part ways with the server they bought not that long ago. And some departments find it difficult to justify the cost vs. the benefits of buying and replacing a server that appears to be effectively and smoothly running the internal app server during its short lifespan, even though it runs a greater risk of failing any time even though the application may not be high availability.
The IT manager has many challenges, from hardware and software resources to staff, but the IT organization must still operate smoothly and support the business no matter what. These challenges are a natural part of any IT organization and therefore require that IT carefully assesses the way it conducts its business, and is especially critical for those finding it difficult to address these challenges. This is a pre-cursor to my new entry “How to effectively Manage Today’s IT Challenges”.
