What I want to know

primary-badgeinfo-badge September 03, 2020

What I want to know when I start a new Role

Vision & Roadmap -

  • What’s the current vision for the IS department?
  • Approximately where is the department in the delivery of that vision; on schedule, behind?
  • What are a couple early objectives of the role that I might fill?
  • Are there any points of specific concern that I should be aware of and prepared to address?
  • How is success currently measured for the department?

Infrastructure -

  • Is there a current inventory?
  • What primary architectures do you leverage?
  • What is the mix and count of current infrastructure?

Applications -

  • What is the application architecture?
  • How well is it documented?

Critical Services -

  • What are your critical services?
  • What applications and infrastructure deliver those services?

Monitoring -

  • What is used to monitor the environment?
  • What the current noise ratio?
  • Are there issues where IS isn’t first to know?
  • Can I get a list of the top 3-5?
  • What’s Uptime for IT this Month and last Quarter?
  • Is that an improvement or a reduction from last year?

On-Call -

  • How does the IS department manage on-call?

ITSM -

  • What system is used for Incident / Request / Change?
  • How well established is ITIL?

Projects -

  • What project style is currently in use; Waterfall, Agile?
  • If Agile, then is there a particular flavor of agile being used?
  • What tools are used to support project delivery?
  • What projects are slated for the year / PI, and are they prioritized?

Vendors & Contractors -

  • How many vendors are engaged?
  • Are there any that I would need to give special attention?
  • How many direct contractors are engaged?
  • Is there a plan around flipping the good ones and top-leveling the less impressive ones?

Team -

  • What’s the budgeted versus current head-count for my department?
  • What system is used for performance management?
  • Are there any individuals that are in the top/bottom 5-10%?
  • Is there a feeder-org?

Culture -

  • Tell me about the culture.

CapEx / OpEx -

  • What is my overall versus current OpEx and where are we for the quarter?
  • Are we on target for the year?
  • What is the overall versus current CapEx, and are we on target?
  • Are there opportunities for consolidation or removal of OpEx items?

CI/CD -

  • Are you using any continuous integration / continuous deployment methods?

Automation -

  • Does the department currently leverage any automation frameworks?

Documentation -

  • How are you currently managing documentation?
[ ]