Steve Laster’s 8 Factors for Successful IT Management

Harvard Business School’s CIO delivered an engaging keynote address at the Campus Technology 2010 Conference. It included this set of recommended practices that all IT shops should strive to incorporate.

For this week’s post I’m taking off my Ed Tech hat, and swapping it for my ”IT Manager” hat. While I am undeniably an Education Technology enthusiast and advocate (alright, I’m a tech geek), professionally I am first and foremost an IT Manager. Mr. Laster’s presentation was inspiring, and it addressed many ideas that I feel strongly about as a technology manager, so I’m sharing some of them here in the hopes that others can benefit from them.

Hopefully this post finds it’s way to other managers, and aspiring managers, and reminds them of some of the things that can really impact the value we can deliver to the organizations we work for. If you are reading this and you are not a technology manager, there is still plenty to be gained by understanding these notions (and by passing this on to other managers that you work with!).

Below I list the 8 factors discussed by Laster - the explanatory language following each of these is mostly my own. I hope that my interpretations and suggestions do Steven’s “factors” justice – he did a great job of backing these up with specific points that that he elaborated on. I also find it easy to speak to these ideas since most of them are concepts I also espouse, and those that haven’t been part of my lexicon previously certainly are now because they just make sense.

1. Hire and mentor a great team. You’re only as good as your people. Hire people with a great attitude and the ability to learn. In addition to taking the time and effort to hire great people, be sure to bring them along with mentoring and professional development.

[Read full post on EmergingEdTech.com]