![]() Resource expenditure (costing nothing or making a big budget impact this year, or next).Requestor’s position (we decide to take it or not).The matrix takes important factors into account such as: The latter keeps the internal customer happy while the former keeps the department focused on what needs to happen first. The matrix is an essential tool that ensures that the most important tasks receive the time and resources they deserve, but also “walkaway tasks” - i.e the printer needs more paper - aren’t neglected in the process. The next step in the process is to flow the identified key projects into a Priority Matrix: also a spreadsheet, but one that combines qualitative and quantitative judgments. The answer isn’t what you and your team are most comfortable with it’s what the company needs from you. If you prefer an analog approach, a whiteboard is perfectly sufficient to document these responsibilities, so long as task ownership (per individual) and any cross-functional dependencies are well-defined and enforced.Īfter this initial exercise, we knew what the problems were, but the question became, “Where to start?”. The first step in this rebuilding process was to create a more formal spreadsheet called a Responsibility Matrix, which is essentially a spreadsheet intended to address foundational issues. That’s the function of a Priority Matrix, which became a vital tool for multiple reasons, which we’ll outline further below. However, a very smart colleague and an IT cohort volunteered his time to ‘school’ me about how to prioritize projects/tickets and how we shouldn’t devote endless time discussing it. ![]() IT is a fast-paced work environment, afterall, and process shouldn’t ever overshadow activity. Process doesn’t have to be heavy-handed and a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) is by no means a shoe-in candidate for Six Sigma. I faced a simple choice: continue projects, don’t rock the boat, and manage from crisis to crisis… or restart with a strong foundation containing the essentials: checklists and forms for on/off boarding, documenting procedures, disaster planning, and… don’t run… having a system in place to track and prioritize our work. We were a manufacturing business and low-tech announcements are still crucial to communicating when people are walking the plant floor. It became even more problematic after we converted the phone system to VoIP and had to use an ATA device to convert from digital to analog. Our plant’s intercom was one example: a hodgepodge of 1970’s equipment and eBay finds that somehow just worked. Other folks who’ve lived in the Midwest might laugh when I describe a “farmer’s mentality” (not a dig at super hard working farmers), but it’s the notion that it’s possible to rig something together and adamantly defend the fact that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Meanwhile, the influx of support tickets and requests continued, without a strong foundation to build upon and with some serious technical debt making our response difficult at best. For example, a biometric time clock is a terrible idea on a shop floor where many working people don’t have fingerprints from their labor. Several projects didn’t align with the business’s objectives and were more a testament to savvy sales people successfully selling products than to IT planning and accomplishing projects in support of the company. Other departments had what could be best described as an adversarial relationship with the department, and.Pertinent knowledge was siloed with that person.The previous IT manager had departed the company without a formal transition.My introduction to being an IT director was trial by fire: It’s a demanding job, but intelligent systems and metrics can make life easier, decisions more defensible, and ultimately drive success and satisfaction throughout your career. You may have noticed the memes comparing and contrasting the first year of an IT manager’s job with their later years against the transformation of Baby Yoda into the venerable, ornery, weathered character from the original films. Download Your Free Priority Matrix Template Today
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