New Role

[dastrix]

So it's nearly September and I start a new role as Network Manager any advice, I have been in the school for 5 years so know everything about the site etc

 

However as a manager It's all new what things should I do and plan for from experience? Anyone ?

[jamesreedersmith]

Check on disaster recovery/backups plans and ensure they are up to scratch as if the s*** hits the fan it will be you it hits.

Look at planning some staff/team meetings and appraisals/catchups with your team and help them develop like it sounds you have managed to.

Look carefully at budgets and always squirrel away a little cntingency under a suitable sneaky budget heading (or headings to spread it out) - look for and make savings where you can.

 

Hope they help a little!

[speckytecky]

Congratulations on the promotion. Sorry to be a damp squib. Hope that your school doesn't become an academy, get new leadership with a coincidal change of governors. In my experience those 3 factors often equals outsourcing and potential redundancy.

[dastrix]

We are already an academy and luckily the head said no to the outsourcing 3 years ago

[ITGURU]

Congratulations on the promotion, I was in same position, technician for 9 years, then took over as Network Manager.

Apart from the ordering side of things, everything was pretty much the same as before as I'd been able to run the network second in hand.

Just ensure you have good documentation, backups etc as they'll come running to you when things go wrong.

 

I don't see why Academy conversion should induce outsourcing and redundancy. The Network Manager knows the network best inside out and like me, I was part of a network merge and have to build a new network from scratch and merge 2 separate schools into one new network.

 

Everything at our school is done in-house. The only things outsourced are Fibre Optic installs (rarely needed). All Installs, Configurations and maintenance is done in-house, with being Microsoft Certified this also saves the school money not needing to outsource support companies if/should anything go wrong.

[speckytecky]

Great to read that it seems a lot of schools haven't got this crazy outsourcing bug. To me, it's common sense that in house has got to be the best option all round but it's like websites I guess; someone in management thinks the web site needs replacing -.often with one like they had in their old school. The point on that being they fail to grasp that someone in house still has to be hands on for the content management!

[dblight]

Congrats on the promotion! It seems hit and miss with schools and their IT staff.

 

My old school wouldn't invest at all in any training for IT staff, you learnt from what you screwed up and what you could get off technet and Edugeek.

 

However my current school was a single academy and now a multi academy trust with IT centralised supporting 6 schools and training is there for when needed/requested.

 

I've so far been on the 2 Microsoft SCCM courses and passed the certification and all 3 2012 courses for MCSA.

 

My advice would be to look at training as stated above we do everything in house. It's cheaper in the long run even with the upfront expense of training. If you can set or use a training budget for IT staff it will be very well utilised!

[dastrix]

We do send staff for training already and most have been on the courses they need.

[Sagima]

I would probably add that you should make sure SMT are aware of everything the department is doing and also make sure they understand why/how you budget is benefiting the school. also helps when you try and make the argument for keeping people/gaining people. Listen to what they think the problems are in the school it system and make sure they understand your plans for improving them.

Get some sort of ticketing system in place and keep yourself updated on the tickets that concern important people and the ones you are having meetings with - that way when you want something from them they remember how helpful and knowledgeable you are. Nice to start meetings being thanked for something rather than being asked how much longer something will be.

As far as courses go we found that the cat6/fibre cabling course has probably saved the most amount of money and been the most directly useful course anyone here has ever been on.

[jallsop]

Congratulations on the promotion.

For me my jobs in terms of NM would be

Inventory the entire network (if not already done) with purchase date an ambitious replacement schedule with slightly OTT costings, including any upgrades to existing cabling (often forgotten) that the replacements would benefit from. I would also outline the performance gains from these suggestions in terms of the impact in the classrooms (sell it in terms the teachers and bean counters can understand).

If you don't have a ticketing system, get one. They've saved hours of time for us.

Create new staff user manuals for the network/vle/mis etc if you don't have them.

Offer training sessions to all staff on any aspect of IT, from using Word upwards.

Use job descriptions to assign key roles to any other techs. Give them specific responsibility (but not sole access or knowledge) for different things (vle/mis/server admin) then create a human centric approach to appraisal which not only points out the next steps for the techs to take, but recognises key successes too. After a year or so, switch those key roles over, so each tech learns and handles everything over a 2-3 year period.

Create and publish a termly, or half termly newsletter to the entire staff describing your work and the ticket solution rates you've managed.

Check out and invest in a centrally managed printing system, using the same devices across the board. (Expensive to set up, but we've seen significant savings on running costs)

Set up and use printing quotas, and link to tangible eco equivalents. (We use trees chopped down)

Try to get you, and your other techs trained in something tangible, like MS or Cisco or whatever.

Don't get caught in the timetabling and exams trap.

[DaveCoop]

Don't get caught up in school politics ! just make sure everything is documented ! keep a live inventory of stock items make sure your paperwork is up to date and if you use any monitoring software make sure that is documented on what you are monitoring with the head and Business manger agreeing to it. I think the message is Documents. its easy to say ill do that later but you never get around to it, yet when you need that document your screwed without it.