Common mistakes by the IT managers – Wrong hiring, wrong promotion of staff, giving favors unnecessarily, hiding errors and hiding bugs

Mistakes made by the IT management can be costly for the organization and have the potential of destroying the IT managers career

Enterprise technology management is a difficult task and requires expertise as it has a higher associated risk factor in comparison to normal technology management. Mistakes of management in handling the enterprise technology can have a different impact ranging from embarrassment to warning of job displacement. Some of the mistakes that are commonly made by the IT manager are the following:

Vendor Mismanagement

Vendors are always seeking for favors by developing good relationships with the IT manager. The relationship begins with benefits offered by the vendor which results as the manager ends up giving favors. The main motive of the vendor is the expansion of their services into the organization and make the organization dependable on them. If the favors exceed beyond the limit then it can cause damage to the organization. The common mistake by the IT manager is using multiple products from the same vendor which limits the list of vendors. IT managers should be intelligent while handling the negotiation process with the vendors and keeping their options open.

Cloud and Data Consolidation

Data migration to cloud and creating it as a virtual data center is a recent trend but when considering the migration plan, it is necessary for the IT managers to consider some important factors like the following:

• Data severity
• Type of cloud service
• Subscription models of cloud service
• Organizations needs
• Stability and availability of cloud servers
• Backup services of cloud in server failure situations
• Types of operations to be performed on the data migrated on cloud

Overdoing the Business Case

IT managers are trained to get approval for any IT changes by the name of a business case and can spend a huge amount of time on creating a sound business case. It is a bitter truth, that IT spending for major infrastructure improvement is very rare and needs business case because IT managers deal with the non-IT professionals who require a business-relevant explanation to give approval. It doesn’t only requires IT managers to gain trust from the higher management but it also requires trust from their peers in the organization and uses the existing method to improve the processes as an initial step for any problem. By doing so, it increases the chances to get the approval of any IT spending.

Hiring Incompetent IT Professionals

It is disastrous for an organization to hire an incompetent employee and reject a competent candidate. IT managers are responsible to build an effective and strong team. It is a normal practice of an IT manager to hire employees who have a lower skillset then themselves. Organizations often resolve this problem by having a team of interviewers and avoid giving veto power to anyone.

Promoting a Wrong Candidate

This mistake is as common and as severe as hiring the wrong person. IT managers don’t want any competitors for them, as a result, they can deliberately overlook the most appropriate candidate for a position. The phenomena of the right person for the right job should be considered and avoided for any negative reasons while making the promotion decision. Some of the erroneous reasons are:

• Giving a loyal employee a career boost
• Giving a professional the impression of being a good manager
• The manager intends to kill any competition

A wrong promotion can result in disastrous results and can even bring the manager down as well. This is the reason promotions should be done on the basis of an employee’s abilities. A person doing an excellent job on one post doesn’t guarantee the same level of performance on a higher post.

Using Agile for Important Systems

Agile is a short but complex methodology. IT managers can’t apply agile for any system, especially for important or complex systems. It is important for IT managers to understand the severity, complexity, risks and change process of a system and then apply the appropriate methodology.

Saying YES Every Time and To Everything

IT manager lacks the ability to say NO to people, it can result in major security risks and delay in the delivery of results. Agreeing to every single change request can make the system vulnerable and open to the security threat. It is necessary to have the change accepted and incorporated through a change control board. 

Hiding Errors and Bugs  

It is a common practice by many IT managers to hide errors, which can be due to either deviation from the deadline or from a specification document. A small problem can fail the entire system and teams hence it is better to admit the presence of error earlier and rectify it then doing it later. An error means an addition to the cost and as the error propagates into the system it increases the cost exponentially. In this situation, a good relationship with the superior can be the savior of an IT manager.