I am a new Technology manager/applications manager. My first task with the new position is to assess/review our current systems and software infrastructure. Basically a review of the hardware and software used within our group. Can anyone please point me to an example of such a review or template? Is there a community wide accepted practice in performing such a review?
p.s...can we remove posts..I already posted this in a different area and do not want to be accused of cross posting :) Saving Changes...
(INVENTORY) Are you attempting to determine what's out there. This is akin to an inventory. You can learn alot about the efficiency of an organization when you see that they are running on the same version of infrastructure software (versus all over the map). The trick is do determine what needs to be inventoried and what is sufficient detail. Check if there is an in-place software/hardware inventory tool. The answer could be the difference between a 60 min request and a one month all-hands-on-deck inventory.
(EFFICACY) Are you attempting to learn where the weak points in the organization are? Suggest that you start pulling outage reports from a few sources: help desk system; data center logs; focused meetings with your managers (or line support people); and focuses meetings with some stakeholder groups -- your users who 'pay the bills'
(RATIONALIZATION/CONSOLIDATION) See the INVENTORY response. However, this is a good time to speak to your folks and subsets of application development groups on department policies and philosophies. That is, why are you so highly distributed (or concentrated).
This was a server side look. You need to look at networks, voice, etc. You may want to look from the business perspective -- what functions is your department expected to perform and how do they do it. Saving Changes...
Andrew has a nice starting point and it does depend on the goal. I did this as part of a strategic plan I was putting together for a customer.
Taking a similar approach to Andrew to start we then did a SWOT(Strengths, Weaknesses, opportunities, Threats) analysis. This leveraged what the stakeholders had come up with for a company strategic plan to date and measured where the IT department stood. Can it support current and future needs?
I think I have learned that an IT strategic plan does not necessarily wait for a business plan. There is always a business plan, it may just be informal. You need to uncover plan in whatever format it exists. Perhaps this is an opportunities to kick start something more formal.
It all comes back to aligning IT with the business strategy/objectives. Who really cares what IT has unless you are going to use it for some specific purpose, which is supporting the business. My guess is the "depends on the goal" question is really how far along alignment, the business plan and the strategic plan are. The level of detail you go to depends on where things are at currently both in IT and on the business side. Saving Changes...
