The Adventures of an IT Leader - Assignment Example

The Adventures of an IT Leader Introduction The Adventures of an IT Leader is a book written by Robert Austin, Richard Nolan, and Shannon O’Donnell. The book is based on the challenges and roles of an effective IT manager in a business to manage strong relationships, anticipate emerging technologies, and handling difficult situations. Emerging technologies have long been an issue of concern and challenge for IT managers. As information technology is advancing and there is new piece of information every now and then, it is very important for IT managers to be updated with the newest technologies and emerging trends. In businesses, management of relationships with competitors, rivals, suppliers, and customers can only be achieved when the business is going on the right track and emerging technologies are being scanned and analyzed. Updating systems and being up-to-date with the new technologies must be the first priority of every IT manager. Sometimes, other business managers fail to understand these meetings and problems as they fail to understand the technical terms and their importance. Whether the IT department receives any attention or not, they must spend a reasonable time to scan the emerging technologies and analyze them for their systems. Sometimes systems are automatically updated and sometimes they need to be updated to utilize certain features. These emerging technologies must be scanned and applied before the business goes into deeper challenges. The first question that Rubens asks regarding the blog entry about the June outage is what has to be done about it. The blog entry is made by a blogger who described the day when all systems in IVK went down for a while. This was bad for the business and managers were looking to the IT manager for answers of how this happened. Such blog entries are made on the internet and they were accessible to everyone. Removing it wasn’t an option as it has already been posted and someone must have the copy (Austin, Nolan & O’Donnell, 2009). Blogs are not even undoable. Thus, for this blog, it was better to leave it as it is and be careful for future blogs. The blog entry hadn’t caused harm to anyone in this firm but such blogs may cause negative consequences to other firms. Every business must have policies to protect the inside information of the company from being publicized. Viruses and hacking are two major problems within the IT field that make it difficult for businesses to maintain their policies. Ruben asks his team about the general policies that should be implemented to prevent such inside information from being leaked. In order to do this, there are a number of legal and ethical considerations that should be raised (Austin, Nolan & O’Donnell, 2009). Every employee’s computers must be protected and open for investigation at any point of concern. Strict policies and consequences for leaking inside information must be implemented on any employee who is caught leaking information. The third concern of Ruben regarding the blog entry was how to spot the emerging technologies and analyze them to find the most appropriate ones that could be used. This is an important aspect as technology is advancing and as many problems it creates, there are more flexible and easy ways also to come out of those problems. There are new software applications for viruses and to control hacking. The IT manager must be up-to-date with all the software manufacturing companies and public releases about the newest technologies. Issues such as those with blogging cannot be controlled by restrictive policies as internet is an open place where freedom of speech is followed. Anyone can have a virtual identity and present their views without revealing their true identity. In businesses, new technologies can be scanned and analyzed to find solutions for problems. From the three options proposed for enforcing infrastructure technology standards, the third one ‘gradual migration’ is the most suitable one that IVK should consider in order to accomplish standardization. This is the most suitable as it classifies the technology platforms into three main groups: emerging, declining, and standard (Austin, Nolan & O’Donnell, 2009). These groups would classify the investments and time that has to be spent on each. The emerging technologies are the newest technologies which determine the future standards of the business and the investments made on this group should be larger. The declining technologies would be the ones that are outdated and that wouldn’t be promising to the company’s future needs; the investments on these technologies should be nominal. The third group is the standard group which consists of technologies that are supportive to the business’ current needs and applications. The investments on the standard group are not compromised and they shouldn’t be restricted; however, their timing must be planned accordingly. Thus, gradual migration is the best approach towards standardization as it would classify the types of technologies in a business and divide the ratio of investments accordingly so that there is no overspending on IT (Day, 2004). The first two approaches proposed ‘do nothing’ and ‘strict enforcement’ is rigid as they take two opposite directions. This approach tends to keep a balance between the three groups of technologies. In IVK, innovation and standardization can be said to be in conflict as the IT manager does not have the sole authority and all his implications must be discussed with other managers who fail to understand the technical understanding of IT. These managers focus on IT standardization which would limit the investment on innovation as the investment is limited and classified into groups. Any other investment made on innovation would be questioned and disallowed if found unnecessary. The toolkit approach to management given by the kid is a very useful and wise approach. It tells managers that they must not use the same tools or theories for every situation or circumstances as every situation requires a different approach which is the most appropriate one. A good manager would be the one who would keep all the tools in his kit and use the most suitable one which is required rather than using one for all thinking it is the best only because it worked in one situation. Any tool that worked successfully in one situation wouldn’t necessarily work best in the other situation too (Powell, 2013). Hence, this approach to management requires the sense to understand the use of theories, models, and tools at the right time. References Austin R., Nolan R., O’Donnell S. (2009). The Adventures of an IT Leader. Harvard Business Press Day G. (2004). Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies. John Wiley & Sons Powell P. (2013). IT in Business: A Business Manager’s Casebook. Routledge Read More