What do we mean by ‘IT management’?

IT management covers digital technology initiatives at a strategic level. It helps you plan effectively, manage digital technology projects and budgets, and get staff and executive buy-in.

IT management is a broad-ranging term, but when we use it on this site we’re referring to something quite specific. IT management covers digital technology initiatives at a strategic level. It helps you plan effectively, manage digital technology projects and budgets, and get staff and executive buy-in. It includes strategic-level topics such as:

digital strategy
governance
change management
digital culture
stakeholder engagement strategy
risk management
digital technology budget costs
business requirements.

The IT management domain includes the following main areas:

Digital strategy and planning – alignment of Digital strategy and planning with your business plan.
Digital technology cost and value – Digital technology cost comparison with other organisations, priorities, budgeting and value for money.
Executive engagement – consideration and investment at management and board level.
Staff engagement – ensuring staff are satisfied and engaged with the use of digital technologies in your organisation.
Risk management and disaster recovery – critical infrastructure protection, data back-ups, disaster and continuity planning.

We've summarised our not-for-profit digital strategy and management capability levels and requirements in the table below, so you can understand what we recommend to progress through the levels.

Digital Strategy and Governance Maturity

	Basic	Intermediate	Advanced
Digital strategy and planning	You have identified some priority areas to improve, and this is broadly agreed but it is not well-documented.	Your digital strategy/plan is aligned with the organisation’s business plan. It lists forthcoming digital technology projects, their benefits and required budget for next 12 months or more, approved by the executive.	Your digital strategy/plan has a 3 year timeframe and is endorsed by your Board. You have a high degree of confidence in the costs and benefits for each of the improvement projects.
Cost and value	Digital technologies are budgeted for each year, but you are not convinced you get value for the spend.	You understand how your digital spend compares to other not-for-profits, and where more value can be found.	The executive are confident you get value from your investment across all areas of your technology landscape.
Executive engagement	Digital technologies are considered a cost that should be minimised wherever possible.	Digital technologies are considered an investment. Digital technologies have an effective voice at the Executive and Board levels when decisions are being made. The Executive engages in the discussion about how best to balance functionality and spend.	Digital technologies are proactively consulted early in the decision-making process about new programs, services, offices etc. The executive embraces technology change and actively owns outcomes and supports the change process.
Staff engagement	Staff engagement is focused on fixing things that are broken.	Key staff across the organisation are considered ‘champions’ and have a role in helping other staff get the most from your digital technology environment. You measure staff satisfaction on digital technology through a survey process (or similar) at least once every two years.	All staff are proficient at using key aspects of your technology environment. Staff are keen to innovate, learn new digital skills and make the most of your technology environment. You measure staff digital satisfaction through an annual survey process (or similar).
Risk management and disaster recovery	Key infrastructure (servers and network devices) are protected by warranties with defined response times. Data is backed up regularly.	We have defined recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) for key information services. A disaster recovery plan incorporating RTO and RPO objectives have been tested in the past 24 months.	A business continuity plan detailing how critical organisational processes operate when technology is down is tested annually. RTO and RPO objectives have been tested in the past year.