IS manager tasks / duties ???

Ultimately, you should be posing this question to your manager. It is his/her expectations of your job that should govern your direction.

But, there are two basic options. One is that you are expected to be hands on. The other is that you are hands-off. The latter makes you a manager, the former makes you a supervisor or foreman...some sort of lead tech person.

Managers, particularly in IS, have to know how to manage people. There is always more work to do than people to do it. Managing work, uncovering and setting priorities, providing feedback and statistics on the effectiveness of your department, are all important. You should be looking at some formal management training, if this is your mandate. Although I have an MBA and consider it very useful, that's a long row to hoe. There are many smaller certificate programs offered by local institutions, usually under the heading of continuing education.

If you're expected to stay technically proficient and act as a supervisor or foreman, you will need to balance the above with continued technical development. You need to be the first one to see new tools, take new courses, evaluate upgrades, etc. in order for you to provide technical leadership to your crew.

Hope this helps.

I fully agree with the previous posting.
In short, the IS manager is usually a positions whose incumbencies are defined by the organization itself. If the organization does have an adequate organization chart, it should reflect what's expected from this position.
But as you describe the situation, you are most in a de facto managerial position, presumably not well defined. So it's a need for you to have a preplanned meeting with your manager and try to state on paper your formal duties. Thenyou'll notice those formal duties aren't the same as actual duties. And here is where your ability to deal with people and organizations needs to be assessed.
At the end, you can refer to the SEI CMM (Capability Maturity Model)(www.sei.com) for recommended standards for different functions. But that requires organization commitment, not a little issue.
best of lucks.
rigl

I concur with the first two answers. For a different perspective, here is an excerpt of what Automation Officers do in the US Army.

"Trained and led a team tasked with designing, installing, troubleshooting, and maintaining robust data networks for numerous customers, including routers, switches, cabling, desktop and notebook computers, and all associated hardware and software. Completed industry-certified training courses and applied the knowledge gained. Eight years of experience in theUnited States Army in leadership positions tasked with training and leading organizations of over 100 personnel and equipment valued in excess of 50 million dollars in complex tasks.

Pioneered the planning and implementation of Intrusion Detection and Vulnerability Assessment technology in tactical/field data networking.

Planned, installed, and maintained numerous data network topologies for hundreds of customers over the course of several major field exercises and contingency missions, including disaster relief over three countries in Central America and two nationwide training exercises. Linked customers to their home-station servers, and installed field servers including e-mail, domain access, web, and file services.

Installedand maintained a home-station data network including over 100 computers and all associated hardware and software valued in excess of $200,000. Planned and implemented a complete organizational transition to the NT 4.0 operating system. Monitored and adjusted for network performance changes in the home-station network and field networks."

As you can see, an IS Manager in my organization is a mix of leadership and technical. We have to make our people perform and we have to be able to do the work ourselves. We're given the freedom to adjust the two to our own preferences, so long as the job gets done and our soldiers stay out of trouble.

Good fortune,
Don

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