Speed: Key Factor for Successful Interim Management
There is a significant difference between a Permanent Manager and an Interim CTO. Permanent managers have a lot of time for onboarding. Usually, the first 3 months are reserved for onboarding. But an Interim Manager does not have that luxury. An Interim Manager has to be productive from day one. Onboarding has to be done much, much quicker. Within a couple of days, you have to know all key people, all key projects, and all challenges inside the department.
Three months onboarding vs a couple of days onboarding. Challenging.
You must have a certain skill set to achieve this ultra-fast onboarding. Really good people skills. Really good strategic skills to assess and understand all projects inside the department. But there are also some tools that come in handy.
One key tool for me is a simplified Due Diligence / Tech Assessment checklist that I developed over the years. By going through the list, I immediately find blind spots and things to improve during my tenure with the company.
Due Diligence Checklist
Over the years, I developed a checklist that helps me to get a quick overview of the department I am working with. The Due Diligence Checklist for IT Departments is published as a Google Spreadsheet and just got a big update. Feel free to make a copy, modify it, and use it for your purposes. Feedback is always much appreciated! Let’s improve the Due Diligence Checklist together!
The Due Diligence Checklist has five sections:
- General Organization of the IT Department
- Culture
- People (HR)
- Product
- Engineering
Each of the sections contains a list of questions that you can answer. The second column contains a dropdown to assess that question (red, yellow, green). You can add your notes and observations in the third column.
After finishing the assessment, you might find areas that are red. The cool thing is that focusing on red and yellow areas will boost the effectiveness of your client massively.
The other big benefit is that you will get to know a lot about the department in a very short amount of time. The Due Diligence Checklist facilitates speedy onboarding. It’s structured and useful.
Also for Team Leads, Engineering Managers, VPs, and CTOs
In conclusion, the Due Diligence Checklist is very useful for my daily work as an Interim CTO.
But.
This Due Diligence Checklist is also used by team leads, engineering managers, and CTOs. It’s an effective way to assess your department. Do this once a year, and you will find areas that need your attention. It helps massively to fix problems preemptively before problems pile up.
A Book From the Checklist
The five sections inspired me to work on a book on Effective IT Departments, initially called “The Effective CTO”. I just released a much extended and upgraded version of the book with the new title “Spicy: The Tech Leadership Cookbook”. The book is written in a traditional “cookbook” style that delivers solutions to common problems in the five areas.
Conclusion
Knowing what is going on in your team or IT department is extremely important. The Due Diligence Checklist allows you to very quickly assess what’s going on. For Interim Managers, it helps to be productive on the first day. For team leads, engineering managers, and CTOs, this checklist allows you to preemptively identify problems and tackle them before
