Overwhelmed IT Managment can happen to the large and the small.
Many larger organizations are facing cutbacks to their labor pool and the IT department is no exception. It is likely that the smaller the organization, the less likely these cuts are to occur, but IT managers need to be prepared for the best and the worst either way.
My day job as a systems administrator/help desk/support/project manager/application specialist brings a number of hats to my office and though my official title is IT Manager, some days managing IT is the last thing I get to do. This makes it increasingly more difficult to be seen as a manager, sometimes there are things that just need to be done, one such project is Windows Update management.
This is ongoing for us due to the frequency of the updates and the number of computers in our environment. We do have a WSUS server (more on those in a coming post), but as many IT managers know, automation is perfect only in theory. Getting patches caught up to allow the WSUS server to function as best it can is one of the biggest tasks I face at the moment. It is coming along, but coupling it with support and disbelief in our back office system… managing IT, even in a small organization can be quite the task.
On another blog recently, I read an interesting post comparing IT leaders and IT lemmings. The post is found here, and is worth a read. Just for something to keep in mind as you move ahead in your IT management career.
One thing that remains hard for me as a single employee technology department is being able to feel ok relying on outside consultants for help with any problem. If there is something that needs to be solved or changed and the answer is on the tail of your mouse, it might be worth putting in a ticket with a consultancy to aid in the process. Putting your pride aside to get a solution implemented correctly can be a tough spot, but as I too am learning, it will help you in the long run and you might even learn something.
