IT Employment

In a one man situation..wherein you're the IT Man, The Network Admin...and infact 1st line support plus anything that has to do with IT and most probably electronics, you certainly are in charge! I once wrote the IT strategy of a well known Charity Org, all alone. The experience was good and played aplus to my multi-tasked job description. Teams are good, but good consultations and vision I think, should determine who does it.

IT policy is no rocket science and should be in line with business needs and written by a security specialist. Policy should be in line with many of the IT standards such as BS 7799 ITIL etc. However workprocedures can be written by a team of people and should reflect the current situation before people start changing infrastructure to get it to ajust to policies and procedures. Try to get it to fitt the business not the other way around.

I work with a small company of about 100 end users and i'm the Network Admin and when it comes to policy, the IT mgr. asks my opinion and usually takes what I say into fact and enforces it. But when we write the policies, all 3 of us in the Dept. talk about it because EVERYTHING that we do is at risk so it involves a department meeting and we get it done.

Currently in our organisation the IT Team determines what should be written into the IT Policy and then it is passed through the management and Councillors to be signed off. If they don't like what is in there they will not sign it off. I beilieve that the end result is that you need support from your management to enforce these policies.

In my organization, the entire team of Help Desk Technicians, Systems Administrators and Director writes the IT Policy. The buck stops with the Director of IT.

There should be a team or a committee of sorts that decides on the elements of a base policy. This should be a companywide policy that is signed off by a VP, Director, CEO, etc. Once the policy is in place then managers have the discretion of adding to it for their departments. What they add - if it is reasonable - could be implemented. If their request does not seem reasonable, then it would have to be forwarded to the policy authorizor for approval. It should never be left to the administrator alone - he/she should have assistance and someone to back them up.

Please make sure somebody on the team can write. If you have to draft someone from outside IT, hire somebody new, or accept someone with less-than-excellent tach skills, so be it.

I agree 100% that hiring someone who has writing skills is imperative to creating functional documentation that has value for all team members. My personal vote is to acquire a technical writer to at least edit and organize the documentation so that it is usable and easily understood by ALL team members.

Or third, but IT as a whole looks foolish to the company or organization if your releases/warning/documents are written by an unskilled writer. I am associated with an organization fighting the PR problem and our releases don't help.

On a side note, keep the policy team small and get support from the higher-ups. Without those two pieces you will be fighting a long (and probably losing) battle to get a decent policy implemented. (speaking from several months on a policy team re-writing the policies for an org with around 13,000 people in it)