As an church, specifically IT, we are struggling with explaining/demonstrating the amount of what we “have to do/keep going” vs the actual amount of “resource/human onsite/remote” hours.
Wanted to see if anyone in the community has struggled with this at your church and how did you go about setting up and/or asking for the right amount of resource/capital/understanding to right size your team, etc.
Here is a rough idea of our foot print:
2 Campuses, 45 minutes apart.
The biggest thing that helped us grow our team from 2 - 5 was a quality ticketing system (we used Zendesk) and the advanced reporting it gave us. We then could ask leadership what kind of response time they would like to see along with working on growing the infrastructure and improving ministry efficiencies through the use of technology. I always try to make the approach to give data a seat at the table for decision makers with anything as much as possible. Asking leadership what they would like to see happen and using data to show what we need to make it happen.
Ditto to Rob. Use of ticketing and project stats grew my team from 1 to 4.
Makes sense.
The dilemma we face, is a part time IT Director (paid for 20 hrs a week) and me the volunteer System Administrator.
Right now, we do not even have an FTE at any IT experience level for our team.
Thank you, Blane
Here is our foot print:
| Campus | PC | MAC | Server (PHY) | Server (VM) | Mobile Devices | Printers | Network Switches | Wireless APs | Network Appliances | Firewall | Internet Connection | Cameras | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main | 35 | 18 | 5 | 7 | 30 | 4 | 18 | 15 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 144 |
| Satellite | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 27 |
| Grand Total | 171 |
Hi Blane,
I would start to record the actual amount to time spent doing what kind of tasks. I currently am Trustee of a charity and 2 small businesses, with interlinked IT systems that I operate in my spare time and tracking my time is showing me more clearly where I am wasting time. I am desperately in need of some specialised tech, but I have managed to create a roadmap of sorts, which has helped me to define my priorities.
Given the number of PCs, Macs and mobile devices you have, it would be worthwhile putting in some MDM if you don’t already have it to make maintaining these units centrally much simpler. 18 switches seems an awful lot. Even in a 13 building school campus I once ran we never had that many! You might want to look at how to scale that back and consolidate if you can.
Blane,
The fundamental issue is this. Leadership doesn’t understand what IT does, and when it comes to additional resource requests, your request competes with other requests they do understand and perhaps value even more. They aren’t going to become fluent in IT, so you need other ways to make clear the contribution IT makes and communicate the benefits of what your want to do. Here are some ways to do this.
Know your church’s IT history and current problems/needs and focus on solving problems that impact ministry and staff
Know how your IT resourcing compares with other churches of similar size and characteristics
Obtain actual quotes from 3rd parties for doing what your staff does (in whole or in part)
Understand the cost of doing what you do using other means: technology, outsourcing, other services
So, here is a snapshot of how I used these when I took on IT at my current church.
History and Situation: The church had a dedicated IT person up to 5 years before I took over. Then they added other responsibilities to that person’s job description. By the time I was asked to take over, performance and reliability of their computer systems was the #1 complaint of staff.
I focused on those current problems, but not JUST solving those problems, I also used them to educate church leadership on how we got there. I got approval to put together a Technology Task Force made up of people on staff and in the congregation that had the expertise to work on these problems and make recommendations. In this church’s culture as well as the denomination they belonged, both value committees. So I was playing into the church culture. I made sure my boss, the church Executive Pastor was on the team. Not so much for his expertise as much as his buy-in. He got to see first hand the depth we studied the problem, investigated alternative solutions, and evaluated the alternatives taking into account factors that mattered most to the church.
At the end of about 7 months, we recommended and the church board approved a capital investment that went way beyond anything they had ever done before.
Could I have put together a recommendation myself in less time and resources? Yes, I could. Would it have been approved? I don’t think it had a chance. But even if it did, the long term effects of that effort are HUGE. Now when I make a recommendation it gets approved. I have a track record of understanding the problem, the alternatives, and choosing the best path. They also asked me to transform the Tech Task Force to the Capital Spending Management Team. For the last 5 years this team I lead effectively makes all the capital spending plans for the church each year and oversee the implementation of those projects. Technically, we are a ‘recommending’ committee to our church board. But the fact is they’ve never changed a single recommendation we’re made and no one but us oversees their implementation.
It’s all about building trust by showing you can and should be trusted.