An IT Manifesto

As a disclaimer - this is intended to be a very short and high level overview on the foundations of an IT function - there's a huge amount of overlap/interaction and variety that I won't be touching on.

Within my role at Farewill I put together a short manifesto which summarises the IT function; the key mission statement being that we want to get to a stage where nobody else in Farewill is worrying about IT, even as we scale.

Enabling ourselves and others involves identifying toil and removing it. How that's done - via consolidation of effort, improved tooling, or even simply better comms - is something that should be decided in collaboration with users. So paradoxically, everyone needs to be thinking about IT and how we can help them in order to stop worrying about it. This can only be achieved by building an approachable and accessible IT org.

To be clear, unless you build your IT function to be inclusive and accessible for everyone then you hinder your own ability to remove toil in your organisation.

Toil (boring or unnecessarily fiddly work) is not the only thing an IT function should be reducing worry over.

Security comes to mind, and so does growth (hence even as we scale) - increases in risk, headcount, and customer demands on a business are things which can't necessarily be predicted but should be borne in mind. Again - cooperation across the other functions in a business is critical to success. If the admin assistant in HR who started 2 days ago doesn't know who to ask about sharing documents securely, or is scared of doing so, then that's an IT problem which could lead to a very problematic security issue. In a fast-growing company there might be several of those folks turning up every week.

The perfect organisation doesn't exist, and you'll never get risk to zero - but being the kind of IT org that people are not afraid to "ask stupid questions" or look into "probably nothing" with will stack the odds greatly in your favour.

With that rambling exploration of the one-liner over you'll be pleased to know that the rest of the manifesto doc is a tidy list of bullet points. There is also a summary of how to contact IT internally in the original, which I have not included here.

The aforementioned tidy list is below.

What we do:

Comms Security Documentation Plan for scalability End-user support Service management

What we care about:

Accessibility/Inclusivity Productivity Safety Positivity Collaboration Empowerment Equity

How we behave:

We foster collaboration and help people find the right solution rather than just the expedient one We're approachable and kind We're active listeners We're aware of our skill deficits and solve for them We provide open honest feedback with kindness and understanding of context We confidently explain concepts and fixes without being condescending or needlessly complex We're strong on policy and processes, but through understanding rather than dogma We don't always say “yes” but have the courtesy to justify “no” and work toward a solution Hopefully this has been useful and, if nothing else, will provide a starting point for your own manifesto for IT or another business function.