Question: Where to go for TRAINING on being a good IT Dept Manager?

[ETan]

Long story short, my boss went nuts one day from dealing with the IT Dept, and has put me in charge of 8 other people (the entire dept).

I'm 24, and the dept has people who've been there for 20+ years, and the oldest guy is 61 yrs old. I haven't had much sleep this week thinking about how to tackle this challenge. Basically the dept is in a slump from lack of management and support (no reviews, no training, no accountability, etc).

I'm looking for places (prefer physical classroom, but online will work also) to learn how to be a good IT Manager. I have good communication skills, and I have read a few good books on management.

Besides learning about being a manager, I have to learn about technologies we use in house:
- Lotus Notes
- AS400
- RPG
- .Net (VB, etc)
- Windows server (2000, 2003)
- Exchange / Outlook (2000, 2003)

Any ideas? I've looked online and locally for fast-paced courses but have not had much luck.

 

[AFB]

RPG as in games?

 

[DWW]

On a more serious note RPG is a -good- thing to know. It pays $150,000 CAN to have 5+ years experience in it. From what I've seen its not even that complex, just a lack of experts for it.

We have tons of COBOL-knowing students coming out of colleges still here in Ontario. Its still being taught but by god RPG makes a killing.

 

[Soybomb]

college management classes?

 

[T2T III]

ny ideas? I've looked online and locally for fast-paced courses but have not had much luck.

OK, some other suggestions:

- How to suck up to the client 101
- How to "off-shore" the department 200
- Dealing with Microsoft Subscriptions 101
- How to give low raises and keep the morale high 205
- How to trick employees into working 12-hour days 105

Those should be a good start for you.

Best of luck.

 

[KLin]

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
RPG as in games?

RPG as in the programming language that is used for applications on the AS400. It stands for Report Programming Generator.

 

[Batti]

Don't assume you know what needs to be worked on. Get your staff together, and make it clear that you want their input and experience to help guide the next few months. There will be much grumbling at first, but if you are sincere and direct, you can make this work. You must get them to trust that you don't have all the answers, they do.

Good luck!!!!

 

Go out, get the staff drunk, and take notes about what they bitch about.

 

[ETan]

Originally posted by: Batti
Don't assume you know what needs to be worked on. Get your staff together, and make it clear that you want their input and experience to help guide the next few months. There will be much grumbling at first, but if you are sincere and direct, you can make this work. You must get them to trust that you don't have all the answers, they do.

Good luck!!!!

I agree - thanks for the input.

Getting the staff drunk seems like a viable idea too.

$150k for RPG??!?!?! That's freaking amazing... Actually an idea that has been tossed around is to move everything to Microsoft .Net platform. (oh oh, opened up a can of worms.)

And I have actually met with 2 groups of consultants who offered to redesign everything in .Net by a group of programmers in India...