Think Like a Consultant

An IT Management Consultant is usually hired when there’s a problem. Perhaps there have been outages that “shouldn’t have happened”. Maybe users have lost confidence and are bypassing the IT department and developing shadow IT services. What if you know that you need outside help but you have no budget? That’s the time to put on your DIY hat and think like a consultant.

By Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson

Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson is an IT and Telecommunications Management Consultant, electrical engineer, author, speaker, media resource and Expert Witness. She is the President and Managing Partner of TMC IT and Telecom Consulting Inc.

Take a Top-down View

The first job of a consultant is to verify organizational strategies and priorities and how they compare to IT strategies and priorities. If they don’t align, then IT strategies and priorities need to be revised.

It’s not simply a matter of reading the organizational Strategic Plan, but to read the Strategic Plan and translate it into IT-speak. For example, “increasing diversity” might translate into a need to introduce technology to enable persons with disabilities to fulfill job requirements. Similarly, reverse translate the IT Strategic and Operational plans to see how each proposed project would support an element of the Strategic Plan.

That done, you need to present your analysis to the Executive team and see if they agree. As part of the workshop, ask fundamental questions like how important is privacy, compliance, governance, disaster recovery, training, succession planning…

Take a Bottom-up View

Check in with your user departments and ask similar questions, though tailored to the end-user perspective. How important is IT handholding compared with more self-help knowledge? What benefits can they see with improved operational automation? Have they bypassed IT and installed their own systems with only vendor support? Investigate how that may introduce security or other risks.

Translating Your Findings

Assume nothing – look at the data: infrastructure age and suitability, processes, applications, cyber-security and Disaster Recovery plans, contracts, etc. Is the current budget too small? Is your equipment too old? Do you have enough staff? Do staff have the right training? Do they know their priorities? Commonly, whenever there is work than cannot be completed during working hours, each staff member will decide for themselves what should be dropped or partially dropped, like end user communication, documentation, or wiring closet standards.

Once you truly understand your organization’s needs and your current risks, translate this into IT priorities, projects and budgets. Use benchmarking to compare your operations to your peers. Don’t forget to acknowledge what is working well, such as your wonderful staff that works so hard and has such a friendly style.

Closing the Circle

Your findings need to be fed back to senior management. As part of the presentation, it’s important not to pre-emptively sabotage your success with the “they’ll never approve that request” attitude that is so common in IT Operations. In our experience with client projects, IT departmental management and staff do tremendous work under difficult conditions, with their biggest handicap being their inability to ask for adequate funding so that they can deliver the transformational results that they would like to.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you, or to comment on this article, please email me at ellen.