Handbook of Local Area Networks, 1998 Edition:LAN Management Click Here! Search the site:   ITLibrary ITKnowledge EXPERT SEARCH Programming Languages Databases Security Web Services Network Services Middleware Components Operating Systems User Interfaces Groupware & Collaboration Content Management Productivity Applications Hardware Fun & Games EarthWeb sites Crossnodes Datamation Developer.com DICE EarthWeb.com EarthWeb Direct ERP Hub Gamelan GoCertify.com HTMLGoodies Intranet Journal IT Knowledge IT Library JavaGoodies JARS JavaScripts.com open source IT RoadCoders Y2K Info Previous Table of Contents Next 7-5Structuring a LAN Support Department RONALD ROSEN Every IS environment dictates a different method and structure. Personalities, client requirements, job requirements, rate of change, size, and resources available all factor into a manager’s decisions. The trick is to identify a management method and organization that works in a particular environment. Managing a PC or a PC department, a small LAN, a large WAN, a global internetwork, or a mainframe environment must be done using the method that works today. That method must be reviewed regularly to adapt to changing technologies, changing technologies, and changing customer needs. Rightsizing is a continuous process that is used to manage change. ORGANIZATION SIZE This management philosophy applies regardless of the size of an organization. No matter how secure a company’s market position may appear, if the competition is more responsive, faster, and more effective they take away customers. Business management, and management of all the departments within a business, should focus on the customers. This implies a certain degree of upper management acceptance of each department in the business, and that personnel within each department understand the nature of the business. PRIORITIES As a rule (there are rare exceptions), technology should be used for its own sake only in the research and development departments of vendors. In a business’ technology department, benefit to the ultimate consumer of the company’s end products or services should always be the reason for technology deployment. If providing technological services and facilities to a billing department will not give extra value to the customer in some way, then it should not be done, no matter how impressive a new system may seem when it is demonstrated. One of the responsibilities of technology managers is to know their immediate customers, and their customers’ customers, and to understand the needs of the business enough to be able to establish acceptable priorities and resource allocations. Decisions have to benefit both sets of customers. One technique that successful managers use is to select and present the most effective and expedient application of a new technology to the most appropriate group in the company. This group’s enthusiasm for the new technology may convince more skeptical clients within the company, division, or department, to try it. STAGES OF PROCESS Managing a LAN department involves structuring for and adapting to constant change. A prerequisite is knowing the current position of a department technologically and politically. For the customer, technology has only two phases: development and maintenance. This model an be broken down into subordinate components, but every component will be an aspect of one of these two phases. There is some overlap; an example of development occurring within the maintenance function might be creating a batch file to overcome the lack of automatic features in a purchased product. Activities within each phase can be either reactive or proactive. Every task performed in a LAN department can be described as one of these two approaches. Thee is overlap, but the principle idea is simple: a manager anticipates needs or reacts to them. The manager will not always have a choice. Reaction is the only response possible to several inherited unconnected LANs that are crashing several times a day. (Planning may have to take place during off hours.) If a manager has inherited, or somehow has achieved, a stable, operational, well-managed internetwork, much of the work will be proactive: planning and implementing enhancements and improvements toward the same corporate goals as the clients. If a manager is in the increasingly unusual position of implementing a completely new system, it is the manager’s responsibility to define the structure and management method. REASON FOR BEING IN BUSINESS First the department’s purpose and goal have to be defined. Is the goal to maintain an existing technology? To service client requests? To establish a competitive, cost-effective networking infrastructure? To bring PC and workstation services in house? To facilitate intra-divisional electronic communications? A mission statement would not be out of order here, and once drafted it should be approved by executives as high in the management structure as possible. The mission statement can then serve as a framework for drafting service level agreements; when these are prepared they should be reviewed with the department’s customers. With a stated purpose the necessary resources can be determined and the allocation of those resources planned. Previous Table of Contents Next Use of this site is subject certain Terms & Conditions. Copyright (c) 1996-1999 EarthWeb, Inc.. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Please read our privacy policy for details.