The reader (who we'll call Sam) has already enrolled in some MBA-level
courses and wants to know what position he should pursue next to help
him toward his immediate goal of attaining a mid-level IT management
role.
Sam has already done a good job of identifying the training and
education he needs to make the transition to management. High-level
business courses will help him to start looking at the big picture of
how IT contributes to sustaining competitive advantage and enabling his
company to reach new markets, communicate more effectively with
customers and operate more efficiently.
Concurrently, as he has also determined, Sam needs to seek a position
that will provide him with on-the-job exposure to dealing with these
same big-picture issues. With four years of IT experience behind him,
and no place to go but up, he has a number of options. The only limits
to what he could do next are those imposed by the current state of the
overall job market. The present economic uncertainty - particularly the
number of mass layoffs across the country - may impede his progress in
the near term.
That said, Sam's best bet for a transitional position from hands-on
systems manager to a more tactical and strategic management role is to
stay within the operations arena, where he can leverage his prior
experience as he seeks new responsibilities. (Later, once he reaches his
current goal of mid-level manager, he should consider branching out into
other areas of the IT organization, such as networking and
infrastructure or IT research and development. In the long term, anyone
wanting to reach executive-level IT management will need
cross-functional IT experience.)
Within IT operations are a number of distinct functional areas, such as
disaster recovery planning and execution, capacity planning, storage
management, and more. Sam should choose one of these areas to pursue, as
any one of them will fill in one more piece of the big picture,
introduce him to new colleagues and potential mentors (key to moving
into management), and offer him new responsibilities and technical
challenges.
Disaster Recovery
The disaster recovery team is responsible for developing IT contingency
plans that will restore systems functionality and business operations in
the event of a catastrophe. While its importance has often been
overlooked, since 9-11, it has taken on a new level of criticality.
Disaster recovery analysts, manager, and consultants must work with
representatives across all areas of an IT organization to determine
critical IT resources (including systems, applications and data) and
formulate a plan for restoring them in the face of a catastrophic event.
Moving into this area would simultaneously put Sam in a high-visibility
position and expose him to how other areas of IT function, put him in
contact with the most mission-critical aspects of IT in his specific
company, and offer him the opportunity to make an outstanding
contribution to the organization.
In that regard, moving into disaster recovery would be a solid
transitional step toward IT management.
Capacity Planning
While capacity planning is certainly critical to the long-range success
of an IT organization, it requires technical know-how that Sam may or
may not have in his skills arsenal. Capacity planners must monitor and
track systems performance statistics, and based on these forecast the IT
resources (systems, networks, infrastructure, etc.) that will be
required in the future. So, capacity planners must be able to perform
statistical analyses in addition to understanding forecasting and
systems performance issues.
If he has, or can acquire these skills, a stint in capacity planning
would also give Sam a different take on the big picture, exposing him to
critical long-range IT issues and the intersection of IT forecasting and
business planning. And because, like disaster recovery, it crosses all
areas of the IT organization and the business, it's also a good area for
further developing a network of colleagues and mentors.
Storage Management
Storage management has suddenly become so high profile that it's
tempting to think of it as just another fly-by-night IT buzzword. But,
don't give into that temptation. Storage management has long been a
critical IT function, but since it's not very glamorous and has
typically been viewed as rather perfunctory, it hasn't traditionally
received a lot of buzz.
Data warehouses, ever-growing networks, and large and larger
applications have sent storage requirements soaring into the
multi-terabyte range. Consequently, a number of new storage technologies
have emerged, such as SANs (Storage Area Networks), NLT (near-line
tape), Fibre Channel technology (a communications technology that
connects devices on a SAN) and more.
This might not be an area Sam would want to stay in for long, and it
would likely require him to get some technical training. But it could be
useful to his management quest because it ties directly into capacity
planning and disaster recovery, and also because system performance is
only as good as the input/output. And again, it offers yet another
perspective on the big picture that will be essential to Sam's
continuing rise.
Next week's IT Career Advisor discusses how to leverage your IT
experience to embark on an industry-specific career path.
