IT Production Manager

What is an IT production manager?

In today's ever-changing IT world, the role of IT Production Manager occupies a central position. Responsible for guaranteeing the availability, reliability, performance and security of an organization's IT infrastructures and systems, this role is both complex and demanding.

What are the duties of a production manager?

The role of IT Production Manager is multifaceted, with a complex set of responsibilities. Here are some of the key tasks:

Infrastructure management

The IT Production Manager is responsible for managing IT infrastructures, including servers, storage, networks and data centers. This involves making strategic decisions on the acquisition, upgrade and maintenance of equipment whether in the company's own datacenter or by leasing cloud services.

Service availability and continuity

Ensuring the continuous availability of IT services is essential. The IT Production Manager must implement continuity and disaster recovery plans to minimize potential interruptions.

Measuring and controlling operations

The production manager must analyze the operating monitoring dashboards in order to make an accurate assessment.
He must collect and analyze observations and remarks made by users.
Particular attention must also be paid to analyzing the reasons for non-quality, in order to identify the underlying reasons and take appropriate action.

Team management

Supervising and leading a team of IT professionals is an important part of the role. Team members must be recruited, trained and motivated to ensure efficient execution of operations.

Threat management

It is responsible for constantly monitoring potential threats and security vulnerabilities, and implementing measures to prevent or respond to them.

Budget management

The IT Production Manager is responsible for managing the budget allocated to IT operations, ensuring that resources are used effectively to achieve the company's objectives.

Interface with other company departments

  • It gathers user requirements with regard to IT production
  • It studies these needs from a technical point of view and draws up technical specifications.
  • It commits to service performance levels (SLA Service Level Agreement)

What skills does a production manager need?

The role of an IT Production Manager requires a set of skills that are essential to the successful fulfillment of their responsibilities.

Here are the key skills required of such a professional:

  • An excellent understanding of the company's information system, enabling us to grasp the specific needs and constraints associated with IT production.
  • In-depth knowledge of IT production system architecture and operation, guaranteeing the technical expertise needed to make informed decisions.
  • A sound knowledge of the different types of operating systems, whether large-scale, medium-scale or micro-computer-based, enabling production strategies to be adapted accordingly.
  • A good knowledge of data backup procedures and a thorough understanding of security constraints, ensuring the protection and integrity of sensitive information.
  • Mastery of production methods and standards, in particular those defined by the ITIL framework, to ensure effective management of processes and resources.
  • The ability to manage service providers and outsourcing companies, establishing and maintaining strong partnership relationships to ensure effective collaboration to meet operational needs.

In addition to these technical skills, an IT production manager must also possess professional aptitudes:

  • A strong capacity for work, necessary to manage the many responsibilities and challenges associated with IT production.
  • The ability to prioritize tasks and make informed decisions, in order to optimize available resources and meet business needs effectively.
  • A rigorous and methodical approach that ensures compliance with procedures and deadlines, thereby guaranteeing the quality and reliability of production operations.
  • Effective organization to manage different activities, projects and resources coherently and efficiently.
  • Responsiveness and availability to requests and potential problems, to quickly resolve incidents and ensure continuity of operations.
  • Managerial skills, such as the ability to lead a team of analysts and operating technicians, to coach them, motivate them and foster their professional development.

How is the job of production manager changing?

Once focused on technical tasks, the production function now operates in close collaboration with the company's various business areas. Involved from the initial phases of projects, right from the definition of requirements, the production and IT infrastructure department establishes functional relationships with the business areas. This change is transforming the nature of interactions between production and the various business functions.

The industrialization of operations, and the outsourcing of certain production activities in response to the need to cut costs, are contributing to a change in the role of the production and IT infrastructure manager. He/she is increasingly positioned as a manager. They are responsible for managing contracts with outsourcing companies, technical projects, schedules, budgets and resources.

This profession has become increasingly complex under the combined effect of the demands of day-to-day operations, recent technological developments such as device mobility and system virtualization, user demands as well as the imperatives of cost and time reduction, DevOps methods, the emergence of multi-cloud, Cloud cost control (FinOps)...

With the digital transformation of businesses and the rapid adoption of Cloud and virtualization, the main objective is now to guarantee users IT infrastructures capable of improving performance. Beyond the simple choice of equipment, the rationalization of equipment decisions and IT agility (known as "IT agility") to ensure their scalability have become real strategic challenges for IT departments.

Why hire an interim production manager?

The experience of an IT Transition Manager is a fast and effective response to your production manager needs. His knowledge and experience are indisputable assets when it comes to meeting a one-off requirement, as he is quickly up and running.

Thanks to his IT expertise and management experience, an interim CIO can quickly understand the challenges facing an information systems department and help it achieve its objectives.

Infortive Transition, a specialist in IT interim management, thanks to its experience and its network of IT interim managers, will be able to meet your need for a production manager.

Find an IT Production Manager