How many IT people should we have?

LegacyUser

I'm anon here as I don't want me or my company to be identified.

This is a question for any IT managers out there.

Here's my scenario.

My company has 900 people over 3 countries. We have 4 major (more than 30 people) in those 3 countries and a couple of smaller stations (1 -3 people)
Not all of that 900 have much infrastructure but all have some IT requirement (email / intranet access etc.)

We support about 250 desktops / 100 laptops (with VPN) / 60 servers over 3 major sites and some smaller sites. We're also responsible for about 50 phones inc Blackberrys.

On those 60 servers our team is responsible for all the usual stuff (AD accounts, backups, email servers, citrix, AV, encryption of laptops, VPN, VMWare and various other infrastructure and application servers).

On the desktops our team is helpdesk & desktop support. This includes ordering hardware, configuring it and putting on desks.
Some of our applications are a bit mental. The business doesn't really consult IT when getting their apps in but expects us to support them when these applications go wrong. A lot of the applications are propietary and training is non existant for us in these apps.
We can spend a fair bit of time in a couple of other countries.

Then in general we're responsible for the links between sites, firewalls, DMZ etc.

There is little to no outsourcing done. We do get the odd consultant in for specialist tasks every so often but that might be once a year at most.

We're not very ITIL savvy, I used to hate it in previous companies but I'd kill for some change control now. It's hard to get in. Our manager doesn't "get" that we need it.

I started here 3 years ago. Had loads of ideas of how to improve the situation but have gotten bogged down with constant day - day requests. There is little to no project planning done here.

Our IT dept consists of 3 IT staff and a manager. On paper my job title is network admin. The other two guys are similarish titles. In reality I don't know what I'll be doing on Monday but it's desktop support, it all depends who rings with problems on Monday morning. Our manager isn't much use in supporting our users so he doesn't really count much. I won't comment about him much. I've tried to get such outlandish ideas such as policies, procedures, SLAs etc but 1: he doesn't understand this stuff and 2: I can't do it myself as I don't have the time for it.

So the question is how many IT people would you say are required for the above scenario? I'm sure I've missed plenty of our duties but you get the gist. I'm at the end of my tether and it's affecting me. I'm generally in a bad mood. You know how it is when you know how something should be done, and you get annoyed when it's done assways because it's the quick way to do it. One of the guys in the team has a great saying. "We never have enough time to do it right, we always have enough time to do it again".

Milk & Honey

You shouldn't have any. You can't use the ones you have properly. You will have to leave. No point in peeing into the wind.

Stheno

Hey OP,

I worked in an organisation of similiar size, (was the IT Service Manager) and for 700 IT users and 700 Blackberry users, the Service Desk, Deskside and Operations team totaled 11 people not including me.

However technologically it was very diverse, and had at least three times the amount of servers you reference.

Common standard in the industry is that in a standardised environment, you need one support staff per 100 users.

Your biggest problem imo is the lack of process/ITIL.

tonto2010

I also worked in an environment very similar to yours for a couple of years. Hired as tier 3 server support but ended in deskside supporting 100's of crappy legacy financial applications.

My manager was a complete muppet and while he harped on about processes he had no technical experience or ITIL qualifications. We always seemed to be firefighting and jumping from one f**ck up to the next. Management always fingerpointed and wanted someone to blame and several people left because of this...

I agree with the other poster, get out of there if you can.

LegacyUser

Stheno wrote: »

Hey OP,

I worked in an organisation of similiar size, (was the IT Service Manager) and for 700 IT users and 700 Blackberry users, the Service Desk, Deskside and Operations team totaled 11 people not including me.

However technologically it was very diverse, and had at least three times the amount of servers you reference.

Common standard in the industry is that in a standardised environment, you need one support staff per 100 users.

Your biggest problem imo is the lack of process/ITIL.

Thanks Stheno. That 1 per 100 users isn't what I was expecting. Is that including 3rd level support?
The biggest problem I have at the moment is when trying to do something on a server or work on a project it constantly has to stop to do support calls.

Also for the 1 per 100 that has little redundancy (I'd imagine). A staff member will be off on 4 weeks holidays a year. Another issue we have is our remote sites. That requires at least one person off the main site for 3-4 days a month.

LegacyUser

tonto2010 wrote: »

I also worked in an environment very similar to yours for a couple of years. Hired as tier 3 server support but ended in deskside supporting 100's of crappy legacy financial applications.

My manager was a complete muppet and while he harped on about processes he had no technical experience or ITIL qualifications. We always seemed to be firefighting and jumping from one f**ck up to the next. Management always fingerpointed and wanted someone to blame and several people left because of this...

I agree with the other poster, get out of there if you can.

Thanks tonto. Yeah, thats the long term plan. It's a bit easier said than done though. If we could manage the dept right it'd be a great place to work. I'm at the stage where I'm jaded though. I've tried for the first two years but the workload has increased and there's no room to maneuver now and I'm fed up with the place.

the_syco

howmanystaff wrote: »

On paper my job title is network admin. The other two guys are similarish titles. In reality I don't know what I'll be doing on Monday but it's desktop support, it all depends who rings with problems on Monday morning.

Start making a rough list of what you do on a day to day basis, so you know what techs you have experience in. Make up a CV, list the techs, and see who bites?

leeroybrown

As others have pointed out, start making up a CV and start looking for a better job. You've plenty of experience. Unless something radical happens in terms of how things are done the longer you're there the more it'll get you down.

_Kaiser_

Well speaking from my own experience as an IT/Admin/Manager in my last role, I looked after the IT needs of 20 sites, 5000 users, 1000-1200 PCs and laptops, and about 50 Windows servers. Plus the phone systems

That included everything from project planning, tendering and purchasing, installation, support/maintentance of hardware and software (though to be fair most of the software support was fairly light MS Office issues)

In year 3 they agreed to get a 2nd person. There was a third guy in one of the locations but he was more a Sharepoint developer than support, so most of the work was me and the guy they hired to support me.

But despite all that we went from an enviornment with Head Office having 12 PCs and an old Win 2000 server, using an app called cmail to support those 12 users - to one where every user in the organisation had a (2003 - later starting to move to 2008) Domain account, access to Exchange through the web interface, share drive access, profile/data backups, and we massively increased the numbers of machines to the numbers above. Plus the work we did led us to partnerships with DELL and Microsoft among others.

I don't have any formal ITIL training either, but I have worked for 2 of the big IT multinationals, so I introduced things like...

- An email based HelpDesk (later transitioned to Sharepoint) and ONLY accepted requests through that from users - even if someone called me directly I'd make them followup with an email.
Finance also like things like this as they can charge each centre for your time, and it allows you to track what's going on and identify training needs, recurring problems etc


- A standard Hardware platform. Negotiate with the suppliers to get a deal on a business-class machine (I went with DELL Optiplexes) that includes a "bundle" of the PC and all the bits you need (monitor, speakers etc). Do the same with laptops (even more important if you need to buy expensive bits like docking stations etc)


- A deployment solution. Ghost in my case but MS have a Deployment Server solution now that's even better. Cuts deployment time from 3 hours to 30 minutes (once you get your image right at the start) ansd replacing machines becomes dead easy too if you ensure that any user data lives on shares/home drives rather than on the PC


- Restricted Web Access. Cuts down on the time-wasting sure (so management love it) but also limits the amount of problem apps, viruses, spyware etc. Combine with restricted access to the PC itself and a warning that if they feck things up you'll just be reimaging the machine and that'll dramatically cut the silly calls - leaving you more time to focus on the bigger projects.


Worked for me/us anyway. I was made redundant in the end unfortunately (and despite 2 appeals to keep me on) but I'm proud of what I/we achieved over the 4 years I was there.

(and yes I'm available for the right offer too )

shoegirl

howmanystaff wrote: »

So the question is how many IT people would you say are required for the above scenario? I'm sure I've missed plenty of our duties but you get the gist. I'm at the end of my tether and it's affecting me. I'm generally in a bad mood. You know how it is when you know how something should be done, and you get annoyed when it's done assways because it's the quick way to do it. One of the guys in the team has a great saying. "We never have enough time to do it right, we always have enough time to do it again".

You've kind of answered the question for yourself here.

1. There is no process management or continuous improvement
2. 250 desktops/100 laptops/60 servers
3. no project work which indicates your environment is fairly static

I'd say 4 staff is about right. I have been contracting in a place with about double that amount of equipment, including EMC clarions and a vmware infrastructure, tons of project work, and the ratio of staff is 5 permanent and 3 contractors.

Generally bosses tend to keep going with their habits until there is a major crisis - large scale data loss or widespread virus, so unless that happens, I wouldn't expect changes. Sounds like the company is kinda static also.

If you are hungry for action you could look around for something else. It really sounds like a dead end to me.

LegacyUser

Thanks for the replies guys.

When I said no project planning I didn't mean there were no projects. There are loads of projects. Just no planning. The environment isn't static. We've opened two new small sites in the south of France in the last month. I thought having major sites in different countries would be important as even travelling between sites can take half a day. And the fact that we've 900 staff.

I've worked in bigger companies where the desktop / help desk staff was in the ratios you guys said but then there were admin staff, dedicated application guys and project managers on top of that.

The 3 IT guys here know what we are doing but the constant help desk level calls from 900 staff and constant requests for stuff that should be project managed mean that there's no dedicated time to do the smarter stuff.

The CV is going out soon. Just waiting on a couple of big exam results to add to it.

LegacyUser

Oh and there have been major crises. Our upper management don't have a clue. They seem to think that some of the catasrophes are acceptable. One of our links went down not long ago to a major site in the UK 100% because of incompetence from one individual. 40 peple couldnt work with the IT systems. It took about 6 hours of work to get back up. The backup handnt been tested in ages because of a lack of process and for the reasons above. Anywhere I've worked before the management would have had a fit. Here, once its back up they forget about. The same incompetence causes a big totally avoidable problem like that every so often for us.

ifah

try doing a high level risk assessment and factor in the probability of something serious happening to the infrastructure. Be concise but really blunt and then pass that document up the chain.

I've found in the past that alot of risk is neutered by middle management who don't want to look bad in front of the senior management, but if word gets to senior management that the level of risk they are carrying has the ability to damage or cease business for a time they'll start looking at it more seriously.

as an example - I was called in to do some consultancy on a site last year who had a potentially huge business explosion for a very short period but due to some gaps in their IT infrastructure which couldn't support the increaded business traffic they lost approx 6 million euro of business in 1 week. It made management sit up and address a large number of areas of concern, including removing some of the IT management layer. Most of the issues had a very low cost to address and just needed a little planning to resolve.

BostonB

Classic firefighting. A lot of IT depts do it. They can limp along like that for years.

LegacyUser

ifah wrote: »

I've found in the past that alot of risk is neutered by middle management who don't want to look bad in front of the senior management, but if word gets to senior management that the level of risk they are carrying has the ability to damage or cease business for a time they'll start looking at it more seriously.

You absolutely hit a nail on the head there. I tried that with my manager earlier this year. I tried to explain for one issue that we have a huge risk and that risk doesn't mean disaster. The option I tried to explain to my boss were.

Explain to upper management the risk and

1: get them to accept the risk.
2: offer them a solution which they have to authorise (which will cost money).

He went for option

3: put head in sand.

We have several issues that just need a yes / no from upper management but he prefers to keep IT under the radar.

ifah

Time to go over some heads i think - see if you can get a meeting with the IT director ... end of the day - if theres a big incident cards are going to fall down to you - boss will just sidestep it.

trellheim

ITIL is a stack of bull. That and ISO 27000. Its an expensive tower of poo that takes too long to tell you that perhaps you as an organization should prioritize what you do.

I strongly recommend a read of Limoncelli's Network and System Administration

http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668

It discusses a set of reasonable practices to move from utter chaos towards a more manageable way of doing stuff. And it isnt a six-figure consultancy buy either.

BostonB

Cover yourself with documenting things. But rarely does going over heads work out well.