As an IT Leader, your goal is to help your company meet business objectives through technology by supporting the existing environment and implementing new technology solutions to improve infrastructure alignment with business needs. If you are anything like your peers, you are being asked to meet these goals with fewer budget dollars and resources than ever before.
There will likely come a day when you are convinced that additional resources are necessary to effectively meet your business objectives. So how do you convince everyone else?
Figuring out how to request additional resources for your team can seem like a daunting task. Here are the 4 steps to creating a convincing argument for increasing your staff.
Step 1: Justify Your Need – Clearly identify the reason you need additional resources. Ask yourself these types of questions:
- Compliance: Are there new or upcoming regulatory requirements or deadlines that must be met?
- Increased Demand: Have the demands on your IT resources increased due to a new business location, staff expansion in other departments, or high-profile, high-ROI initiatives?
- Speed to Market: Has the company identified a business initiative where Speed to Market is critical to success?
Step 2: Hire In / Hire Out – Determine if your needs are best met by hiring new staff. If you answer “Yes” to any or all of the following questions, you might consider engaging a contractor, IT Consulting Firm, or an IT Staffing firm instead:
- Timeframe: Is your resource shortage a temporary issue that can be resolved in a few weeks or months?
- Level of Effort: Do you require someone long-term, but with a minimum level of effort (less than 20 hours per week)?
- Expertise: Are resources with the required skillset in high demand or scarce?
Step 3: Present Your Case – Create a Business Case that clearly defines your requirement and proposed solution by focusing on:
- Objectives: Identify how additional resources will help achieve your department’s goals and, by extension, the company’s overall business goals.
- Pros/Cons: List the benefits of bringing on additional resources as well as the perceived detriments such as risk and cost.
- Solution: Show why the benefits of adding resources outweigh the detriments and risks.
Step 4: Find a Champion – Present the Business Case to key decision makers to convince them that adding resources to your team is critical to the success of the business. Never underestimate the value of business sponsorship and support!
Following this plan of action will help create a strong case and will increase your chances at gaining the necessary approval to add the necessary resources to your team.
For more information, download our free Guide to Creating a Business Case:
About the Author
Joe Gay is a dynamic change agent with a 25-year portfolio of success developing IT strategies. His work has enabled successful business growth across a wide range of industries. Joe was instrumental in facilitating the expansion of Lowe’s Home Improvement from 1,000 to 2,000 stores by building and deploying a new, world-class IT organization from the ground up.
Joe is adept at leading and mentoring large teams across multiple geographical areas. He is an analytical thinker able to identify and distill long-standing issues, define solutions, and drive implementations and roll-outs. Joe serves as a subject matter expert on IT processes, methods, and organizations and is dedicated to cultivating high-performance teams.