Page 18 - DCAP307_PLANNING_AND_MANAGING_IT_INFRASTRUCTURE

Planning and Managing IT Infrastructure

Notes 1.5.6 Develop an IT Strategy

The cosmic question “Why are we here?” applies to corporate departments as well. It is entirely
possible that many, if not all, of your staff don’t have the full understanding of how the IT
department serves the entire organisation. When it comes to their job, they may understand
what’s critical for today. But, while today is important, it’s also vital to know about tomorrow
and beyond. If they’re looking at the trees, you have to be the one to let them know about the
forest. The strategy should include feedback from your employees and should be cleared by
your boss, but you should drive its formulation.
Without an IT strategy, you won’t be able to align your long-term goals with your short-term
responsibilities. You need to have these items decided and written down, so that when your
boss tells you to do X, and your employee needs Y, and the other manager down the hall that
helped you last week needs Z, you have a clear idea of which task should be addressed in which
order. Some companies have huge IT departments, with layers and layers of managers.
Organisations of this size have formal IT strategies and sub-strategies.
But many smaller companies don’t have formal IT departments with managers, budgets, and
expectations. Wherever you are on the size and formal structure spectrum, you should have a
strategy. And you should write it down.
Your strategy should include the following:

Who are your team members? And what can they do?
Why/how is technology important to your organisation?
What are your assets?
Who are your customers?
What are your customers’ needs?

How do you plan to satisfy these needs?
While this all sounds simple, it’s deûnitely not.

Example: Your customers may not even know what their IT needs are. However, the
very act of getting this all down on one or two sheets of paper can be of great value.

Determine who Your Team Members are

This seems like a simple task, that is, just list the people in your department. In fact, your team
members may or may not be all the people on your staff. You may have someone in your staff
who has part-time responsibilities to another department.
This person is on your team, but you can’t count on them 100% of the time.

Or, people from other departments, who aren’t on your payroll and report to some other remote
branch of the organisational chart, could be very useful to your department.

Example: They might call you when they hear about certain problems on the system, or
help you when someone in your department is out sick.

These people aren’t on your payroll, and they aren’t in your department, but they are on your
team.

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