IWETHEY v. 0.3.0 | TODO
1,095 registered users | 0 active users | 0 LpH | Statistics
Login | Create New User
IWETHEY Banner

Welcome to IWETHEY!

New If you had full authority....
How would you structure an IT organization? A given is that the company is large enough and profitable enough to both require and afford an internal support structure. With a mix of ~15% expert users, 45% cluefull, 30% novice and 10% PHB level (total ignorance).

My experience is that a minimum of 1 support person for every 100 end users is enough for *adequate* support. 1 for 50 gives superior support. This is for end users, not programmers. I would expect most programmers to be able to support themselves in most cases.

Aside from staffing levels though, how would the structure look? Who would report to whom? How would responisibilties be divided? Would you combine the roles of network admin with network security? Email admin with antivirus? Project manager with database admin?

I know that constraints to the organization will be determined by the type of business in question. I know that most IT organizations are "grown" instead of designed. But, in general, what is a good template to start with if you could design a IT infrastructure?
Life is a Cabernet.
New Not enough information.
My experience is that a minimum of 1 support person for every 100 end users is enough for *adequate* support. 1 for 50 gives superior support. This is for end users, not programmers. I would expect most programmers to be able to support themselves in most cases.

The ratio depends on far too much. How much training they have, how much they can damage their environment, how things are set up.

Oh, and don't expect that of programmers. Sometimes they can, sometimes they're the worst users.

If you're walking into a place, where everbody's got full control over their desktop, and full access to the internet, 1/100 will probably be far too low.

If they don't have access (and can't install stuff), it might be fine. I've been in places that had 1/500, without a problem. But the users there were doing daily work, routine stuff, (diskless 386s) so we only had to worry with scheduled things, training, and the occasional problem. I've seen places where 1/10 wasn't enough, with enough people, more than 10% had a problem at any one time.

Aside from staffing levels though, how would the structure look? Who would report to whom? How would responisibilties be divided? Would you combine the roles of network admin with network security? Email admin with antivirus? Project manager with database admin?

Well, in *my* organization, there's no need for "antivirus". :)

The rest just depends on the nature and needs. If you've got a big infrastructure, it will require more specialization. (And I've never seen a DBA who would make a good project manager).

But, in general, what is a good template to start with if you could design a IT infrastructure?

There's really not one, its too dependant on too much. Get good people, set up reinforcing systems, and handle the cases, and adapt to meet what you didn't expect.

(Reinforcing systems is probably the single biggest issue you need to get right).

Addison
New hmm a lot of depends
desktop support is different from server support and depends on os so for a vendor neutral guess
groups
desktop servers/network databases electronic devices/pbx
desk lead and server/network/lead database lead controls lead
reporting to tech services head
now security could be handled by server/network people(since that is what I do I prefer it that way.
staffing ratios are as addy pointed out entirely based on configuration and control.
Also be aware that your ~15% experts will be >20% of your problems.IMHO
thanx,
bill
Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves.
Chuck Palahniuk
New Authority and support
The level of support needed by programmers varies to much to make any general statements. It depends heavily on what sort of work the programmers are doing, how much authority you give the programmers to change things, what sort of turnover rate the company has and so on.

At one end numbers as high as 1 per 50 could work if the platform, hardware and staff is stable. At the other end, 1 per 10 may not be enough if the programmers are doing a lot of short term work that requires different hardware for each project.

Overall, I've always found that you end up needing more support for the programmers not less. Programmers can work around trivial problems on their own, but they are so much better at creating major disasters. Also, programmers working with Windows will tend to suffer from Windows System Decay faster then end users.

If I had the authority to setup an IT department however I wanted, the one thing I would do very different is how administrative work is done. I would assign each project an administrative assistant to take care of the paper work. All of the time spent by project managers on making sure time sheets are filled out, sending reports to higher ups, checking the vacation schedules don't overlap and so on is time the project manager isn't working on the project. At one place I worked the project manager spent so much time on administrative work that a seperate team leader had to be assigned to actually manage the technical side of the project.

After that, not much can be written in stone because it depends on what sort of projects the company does. Are there lots of little one programmer for one week projects or does the company do 20 programmers for a year type projects? Does the company do projects with fixed end dates and no customer support afterwards or does it do outsourcing, full support type projects? Or, worst of all, does the company do a mix of the above project types?

Jay
New Supporting programmers
In my shop we must be lucky. The programmers who develop on Windows are generally not destructive, all work is saved to servers and they are part of a custom group giving them access to and full control over only one partition (data) on their system. For the boot/windows partition they are setup as standard users. I have also created images for the programmers that can be loaded in under a half hour. So even if they really hose it up, they are back working in 30 minutes. We have about a 60/40 split of developers working in windows/other OSes and those working in the other oses have yet to call me for support on a local system issue (I've been working here over a year now).

One of the reasons I asked for what you would do in setting up an IT infrasatructure is the informal setup we have here. It's too informal imho. We have no designated network admin, just whoever is handy when the need arises. No designated security officer. I only just recently got a manager fer christsake.

Don Richards. Who is much less a fan of anarchy than he once was.
Life is a Cabernet.
New That's bad...
Real bad.

In my shop we must be lucky.

So far, maybe. I suspect much less so as things go forward.

We have no designated network admin, just whoever is handy when the need arises.

Which also means that when the need does arise, or you hire one, they'll have a hell of a time getting stuff done, cause everybody "has always done this"...

I feel sorry for whoever does end up with that.

Formal? Basically people need assignments there, it sounds like. Someone needs to be responsible for the security, and the servers. Might be a programmer, and if they can't handle that and their job, then someone else, or hire someone.

But if nobody's responsible, who's making sure that its getting done?

Addison
New Utter agreement
We have only recently, due to being bought out, become part of a larger, corporate organization. Some very smart people here, but ..... it's a kind of hippy atmosphere. We are in the process of merging with another entity and moving many of it's functions to our location. As part of this reorg, we are defining responibilities and roles. I have been hesitant to bring up before this the need for assigned roles because I would most likely be the one assigned. I didn't hire on as an admin and don't want to be one no matter what my qualifications. I perform some of the duties of an admin on an ad hoc basis and will continue until someone is assigned/hired permantly.

Don't get me wrong. This is a great place to work. Very intelligent group of people. A great product that I actually feel good about knowing what we provide. Anyone here is ready to offer help and jump in where needed. But without defined roles and assigned responsiblities, I see big problems in our future and am mighty glad we got merged with the other company in order to get us off our collective butts and get those roles and responsibilities clarified.
Life is a Cabernet.
New Re: Supporting programmers
It sounds like you have a pretty sane and simple basic setup. Where I work now, different projects are sometimes on different, mutually exclusive versions of the same software. In other cases we only have a certain number of copies of some software, and have to be carefull not to install it on too many machines at one time.

At one place I worked I ended up being given admin rights to the machine I worked on because I had to swap hardware so often that the support guys got tired of hearing from me.

It's not the people that do nothing but interent scripting or VB applications that screw things up, it's people like myself that are forced to play around with com ports under windows and program with weird / obsolete tools.

Not having at least one network admin is a mistake though. Even if you have no public servers, somebody needs ot watch the email server and the internet connection.

The company I work for now is very small, less then 50 employees and we have already had one significant attempt to crack our network and had our email server hijacked once to push spam.

Jay
     If you had full authority.... - (Silverlock) - (7)
         Not enough information. - (addison)
         hmm a lot of depends - (boxley)
         Authority and support - (JayMehaffey) - (4)
             Supporting programmers - (Silverlock) - (3)
                 That's bad... - (addison) - (1)
                     Utter agreement - (Silverlock)
                 Re: Supporting programmers - (JayMehaffey)

It's like a nuclear blast in the basement.
43 ms