I work in the IT department of a manufacturing company with approximately 1400 people and around 400 computer users. Our homegrown software covers around 90% of the processes within the company. Our department consists of eight programmers including myself, and one telecom guy and one network admin guy. The company has grown significantly over the last few years, and our department has not. Our department has been converting an thoroughbred Unix’s system over to a more up to date language for a few years now and maintaining (tweaking new and existing systems). Basically we can barely keep up let alone keep the system developed enough to support the company. The company is starting to feel the effects of expansion without expanding the IT departments. Our leadership feels that once we complete our conversion of the old system to we will have enough resources to handle everything. As of right now I only have one person focused on the new systems development and he is constantly interrupted.
So to my problem (hehe) the powers that be recently decided the we should consolidate the remaining 10% of software out there into out department…….while I completely agree with the concept , I know things will end badly regardless of the consolidation happening or not.
I have figured out that the company invest less then 1% into the IS/IT(counting salaries) areas and more then 3% into production (not counting salaries)
Production is very critical investiment, but I feel that in todays times, IS/IT has a larger positive effect on production labor to sales costs.
My title here is Lead Programmer, but I seem to be more of a project manager/DBA then anything else. I have learned a lot over the 2 years I have been in this position, but I know I'm still very green relatively speaking.
Any suggestions on steps I could take to convince my leaders that more investment and much more organization is needed.
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Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Dear Tony,
Regarding suggestions on steps I could take to convince my leaders that more investment and much more organization is needed? Naturally, every workplace situation is different and the answer always is, "it depends." But generally speaking, one of the best techniques to recommend or convince management of taking a certain action such as increasing the organization is to first take the time to understand the business objectives and operating constraints that your immediate manager and management team faces, from their point of view not yours. Perhaps you know this already. Nonetheless, one approach is to request time with your manager to discuss the business. Set the meeting up by saying that you have some ideas for the department, but prior to offering them you would like to have a broader perspective on the business. That is, how is the business and department going (profit and loss, market share, cashflow, etc.) and what are the key imperatives, objectives, and commitments that management is seeking to achieve. You can conduct this meeting during normal working hours or over lunch, or better yet over drinks after work where your manager might not be as pressed for time. They key thing to remember is that you want to ask questions and listen. Ask the kinds of questions that help clarify the potential value of your suggestions in terms of what is good for the business or department, not because you "feel" a certain way about the current workload. Even if you know all of the issues and answers, you need to ask and listen. And, don't make any suggestions at that point in time. Rather, thank your manager for his time and advice and then ask him if he is open to you getting back to him with a suggestion or improvement recommmendation. And when you do get back with him on your suggestion, justify your recommendation in terms of the information that your manager gave you about the business. Bear in mind, many managers don't want to be caught off guard and will be naturally defensive when cornered, even when your idea is a good one..! Good luck and good post. I hope we hear and learn from others.
Showing the impact on ROI is good, as Mark suggested. But I've had good luck simply documenting current resource loads and showing how they are anticipated to grow. If you have a trouble ticket system, code tracking, bug rates, etc, these can all be used to show the impact of resources vs time vs money. With 8 developers, you probably don't have much time for testing, and you don't have a FT tester. How much money in support (both support time, lost productivity and rework) is spent per bug? How much could this be reduced if the bugs were identified and fixed prior to release? Make the same argument for system downtime, rapid response to change, etc. How much OT are your developers working? What's your turnover rate? What holes in the software development lifecycle and network administration best practices are missing? You've got one system admin for 1400 users, so there's no way he has much time to spend on security. What are your security risks? How much confidential data does your company have? Are your systems affected by SOX, CoBIT, the European data protection laws, etc? Identifying high risk areas that could impact the company and presenting a plan to deal with them (that incidentally includes increased staffing) is a proactive way to help your business. Saving Changes...
It feels good to hear that not just I (and my colleagues) have this kind of problem.
I agree with both Mark and Kellene in what they are saying. I think Marks approach to have an initial meeting to “learn” more from your manager is a wise advice. I would then move on to Kellenes suggestion with a more concrete approach. I would put together some kind of report of how your IT organisation is performing right now. Try, if possible, to base it on key-numbers and try to show the trend over time. If possible even connected to the increased amount of overtime and what that is costing the company. I would also look into the businessplan of your company and base your arguments on the objectives and targets for the coming years. Are your company expanding? If so, try to argue that you not will be able to support the growth of the company if you not sort out the problems in the IT-organisation.
We had a situation in my company were many of the project managers left due to many different, bust most valid, reasons. I then produced a document which described the current situation, which risks that situation has and what kind of actions that are needed to mitigate the risks. This actually turned into a “rescueplan” that was proven to be successful. There is hope…
I am also happy to have it confirmed, that we are not the only company with these types of issues.
I have to admit I half expected to get flamed on this post for whining in public :-)
Its great to know there are people out there who care enough to respond to other people's issues with their own experiences and thoughts.
Thank you all.
I plan to expand the metrics I'm currently tracking, to include time and where it was spent with more categories(testing,coding,documenting,planing,debuging...etc). Currently we only track request counts by the type of request, which is nice to know but doesn't convert directly into money spent on different types of work done.
I will also be looking more at projects that typically get or are currently back burner projects (we have really big back burners) and try and make them more visible to my leaders...I want to do this in such a way that my leaders can see the money benefit of the completed project, but also expose the reason/s why we are not currently working on that project.
Showing time invested in fixing/tweaking/maintaining versus new development should open an eye or two. :-)
Thanks again everyone for your time......and feel free to post more thoughts, ideas and experiences
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