Every department in a company will need to be improved in some form or another at some point. The IT department is especially vulnerable to falling behind due to the fact that technology changes so quickly. This means that your IT department may one day be the engine driving your company forward, and the next is the anchor weighing it down.
There should be some improvements made to the department to make sure it is functioning the way it should be. Projects not only need to be done accurately, but also efficiently so resources are not wasted when trying to finish them. In this article, we will go over some improvements to the IT department that will make it a much more effective entity.
Looking ahead with a crystal ball is the dream of every project manager out there. If they could see the suture clearly they could avert a lot of potential problems. Although you can’t use a crystal ball, you can do some forecasting to see if there are issues that could slow the project down.
Finding errors or bottlenecks in the project can be done using systems that use observability or monitoring, for example. Observability vs. monitoring is a hot topic in the world of project management these days. In essence it boils down to being able to either monitor the team's ability to manage a big system, or observing where the faults lie when a project grows too big.
There should also be some forecasting when it comes to resources. If there are issues with personnel or money that could happen later then it is good to know ahead of time to have a contingency for those issues.
At some point, every IT department will be faced with needing to upgrade their systems which costs money. Or, to continue to use what they already have notwithstanding the fact that saving money now means paying more later. The other issue is that using outdated tools is reducing productivity and costing money in wasted time and resources.
Make sure to be giving your team the tools they need when they need them. Do an audit occasionally to understand if there are some technological advances that will help them to do their jobs more effectively.
There is a problem with a lot of IT departments getting compartmentalized as silos section themselves off from one another. This inevitably ends up creating bottlenecks and slowing the entire project down. It is much better to foster an atmosphere of collaboration so that these problems don’t happen.
Use a platform that allows everybody to see where each team is on the project. This will help them prioritize certain tasks to coordinate with other teams or slow down on their stage of the project.
Project managers will also benefit from this as they can direct their attention to areas that get better results.
