For the class activities, I am planning to use a company that mostly resembles my present job with some imaginary additions. I have decided to do so, because I can imagine myself being a manager in a similar environment in my next job, so it is going to be a great practice and preparation for that.
I am a manager of a small IT group of about four people (including me). The group supports pretty much all information technology needs of a university department. The most important difference in the department’s technology environment from most other department is that the department maintains almost its entire infrastructure. There are servers maintained locally for various services. Besides the server maintenance, my group provides support for three buildings, more than 500 workstations of various operating systems and all software and hardware needs of department’s faculty, staff and graduate students.
Besides the diverse software and hardware platforms and server service needs, the interaction between the group and the varied technology-familiar clientele creates an important challenge for the day to day operations. Also, the group not only maintains, but plans, develops and implements the systems in place to solve departmental requirements. This includes of budgeting and experimenting with appropriate new technologies.
