IT Manager Qualifications

[944fan]

I was a developer for about 10 years and 18 months ago was promoted from senior developer to department head in charge of the development department.

For various reasons I am considering moving on to another company. I don't have any formal qualifications (no degree, or industry quals) which was never really a problem as a developer. However, looking at jobs that I could apply for they all seem to want a degree and industry recognized quals. I am not going to be able to get a degree at this stage but should probably look at getting some industry qualifications.

Anyone have some good suggestions of what would be useful? Most of the job adverts seem to mention PRINCE2, which I find odd - I have met plenty of PRINCE2 qualified people but not one who think it is any good and actually use it in an IT project.

Others mentioned are PMI, ITIL, MSP. Does anyone have any of these and can recommend them? When I was at EDS Defence everyone there was obsessed with Lean Six Sigma and they were all black belt or some st in it. I have never seen it mentioned since though.

[Carl_Docklands]

For your role I would do Agile and do 15 days out of this set:

http://www.qa.com/training-courses/project-and-pro...

I would still do Prince2 and MSP after.

Prince 2 is not relevant in its entirety however, it will teach you how you can construct and control a project.

MSP is excellent and relevant for larger organisations.

[PinkFatBunny]

Carl_Docklands said:

For your role I would do Agile and do 15 days out of this set:

http://www.qa.com/training-courses/project-and-pro...

I would still do Prince2 and MSP after.

Prince 2 is not relevant in its entirety however, it will teach you how you can construct and control a project.

MSP is excellent and relevant for larger organisations.

What he said.
And learn how to communicate with non techy's in a meaningful way - you'd be surprised how many fail here. Also remember that any techy solution is to support a business requirement, at the end of the day no one gives a st about IT, they are that their customers get what they want!

Adam

[944fan]

Thanks for the tips chaps. We have been using SCRUM in our team so it would be nice to pick up some qualifications around that and maybe explore a more formal PM qualification later.

Thankfully I am pretty good at talking to non-techy people. I worked for a police force for 5 years as a developer and they were amongst the most computer illiterate people I have ever met, so managed to hone my skills there. We used to have a joke about how you can tell which computers were used by the coppers as they were the ones who had tip-ex on their screens.

I know what you mean about no-one caring about IT. I worked in a law firm and we were just seen as an enormous cost with no benefit at all. They all thought they get get rid of us completely and all buy a new Aston with money saved.

[AndyClockwise]

PinkFatBunny said:

What he said.
And learn how to communicate with non techy's in a meaningful way - you'd be surprised how many fail here. Also remember that any techy solution is to support a business requirement, at the end of the day no one gives a st about IT, they are that their customers get what they want!

Adam

I couldn't have put it better myself; the IT changes should be business driven rather than just because the IT department want the latest shiny kit / application.

The comparison I use is with lights - when you enter a room you don't care how the lights work or what type they are you just don't want to work in the dark.

All users want is access to their applications or data quickly and reliably. they don't care what OS or hardware or network is providing this they just want it to work

[Burrow01]

AndyClockwise said:

PinkFatBunny said:

What he said.
And learn how to communicate with non techy's in a meaningful way - you'd be surprised how many fail here. Also remember that any techy solution is to support a business requirement, at the end of the day no one gives a st about IT, they are that their customers get what they want!

Adam

I couldn't have put it better myself; the IT changes should be business driven rather than just because the IT department want the latest shiny kit / application.

The comparison I use is with lights - when you enter a room you don't care how the lights work or what type they are you just don't want to work in the dark.

All users want is access to their applications or data quickly and reliably. they don't care what OS or hardware or network is providing this they just want it to work

Trouble is that they do care how much it costs, and 99% of the time don't want to pay for anything they cannot directly see the value of (OS upgrades to retain support / DR / Testing etc)

[AndyClockwise]

Burrow01 said:

Trouble is that they do care how much it costs, and 99% of the time don't want to pay for anything they cannot directly see the value of (OS upgrades to retain support / DR / Testing etc)

Unfortunately I'm all too aware of that, luckily haven't personally experienced some of the horror stories bandied around by friends