For me, there are three main factors to good Information Technology (IT) management. These are:

• Understanding the business requirement
• Managing financial commitments
• Managing the human element

The third one I can hopefully address quite quickly. In my present employ there is just me. In previous employs I have managed teams of up to eleven people which have included quite diverse fields as helpdesk, end user support, infrastructure management and software development so managing people well is essential. It is not enough to sit someone down at a desk on their first day and let them get on with it – when you take someone on you become their mentor within the business and you have a responsibility toward their development.

However, I am currently a department with a sum total of one. Two, if you include my boss, the Finance Director. As such, a lot of formal procedures are typically done away with because they would largely end up as a fruitless paper exercise – often things have to stay in my head. Keeping things in your head is not always a good thing but something which cannot be easily addressed given the time pressures I find myself regularly working under.

The second aspect is managing financial commitments. This includes:

• Fixed asset management
• Service contracts
• Support contracts
• Managing the technology budget
• Operational costs such as consumables
• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and other electronic service elements
• Supplier relationship management

Managing the financial technology commitments we have is vital to show the business what they are getting for their money. When looking to invest in new projects or gain support to purchase new equipment it often helps when you can present a good track record of sensible financial management.

The third item, and the first listed above is about understanding the business requirement. This is listed first above as, in my opinion at least, it is the most important aspect of what we do as technology professionals. However, it is often the most difficult to manage.

In our company, we have no formal communication process or procedure for communicating business information from the board or other management teams so gaining insight into the business priorities is often a case of trying to balance incoming, seemingly disparate, requests from members of the company and extrapolating ideas from them. Our business is dynamic and many of the things that go on are typically confidential so keeping the loop small is understandably desirable.

So those are the three factors that I believe form the basis for effective Information Technology Management and I am interested in exploring how they match up to the ITIL documentation I have been receiving recently.

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