What should the small business IT department look like, and how should it work?
What are the pieces?
Almost every small business IT department is built over a period of years and driven by the needs of the business. There's nothing wrong with this initially. But over time organization can become difficult. The other difficulty comes in increasing efficiency and profits through the use of technology.
The biggest pitfalls in mid sized 5-20 staff information technology management.
The most mis-understood, and thus incorrectly staffed position in most IT departments is the network architect. In many companies the most experienced and skilled technician is made the network architect. But what is a network architect? Contrary to popular belife the network architect is not just the most skilled technician or network engineer. And more importantly, he shouldn't be responsible for fixing all of the complex problems. The network architect should be responsible for capacity planning and scalability of the network.
The network architect job duties are as follows:
-Make sure storage capacity is sufficient
-Make sure bandwidth is sufficient
-Plan for increased needs in bandwidth and storage
-Make sure backup system has sufficient capacity, and the backup/restore window is sufficient to recover from a disaster.
-Make sure security needs are integrated in to the capabilities of the network and needs of the business
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What should the Director of IT do?
Another vague description is the director of IT. As the title implies, the director of IT should be directing the entire operation of the IT department. If your staff doesn't have an IT manager or supervisors, you don't need a director. The function must either be outsourced, or filled by the CFO or other executive level position. It's also generally a bad idea to have the director of IT project managing multiple projects. .
The balanced IT staff.
A balanced information technology staff has a sufficient number of desktop support people. This is the area that throws most departments out of balance. If your staff has five network administrators and only two desktop support staff you've got a problem. The end users ultimately drive the efficiency out of the network. If they're not properly supported, everything else suffers.
Reporting structure.
In a full complement information technology department (techs, supervisors, managers and director, changes in the reporting structure alone can generate valuable increases in efficiency. The network architect may report to the IT manager, but should also connect with a dotted line to the IT director, and in some cases the CFO or CIO. A network architect who reports to someone directly connected to the support structure will become biased towards low support technologies instead of meeting the needs of the business. The desktop support staff should report to a supervisor or team leader wherever possible. These keeps the skill sets close to the end user and at a higher level.
Always, ALWAYS! have a non-technical IT advisory group.
Yes these can turn in to bull sessions but the information gleaned from a tech advisory board can generate big increases in bottom line profits for the company.
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