The size of the company and the industry largely influences the structure of the IT department. In some cases, a little too much. My professional focus is an Internet technology infrastructure.

I encourage the separation of duties between primary production and internal intranet support. Even with a technology company, there will be internal only applications and support demands. Often, helpdesk would fit within internal intranet support. Depending upon the size of your environment, you could potentially justify separating the duties in production between architecture and maintenance.

I like the junior to senior level approach, which is documented well by SAGE's job descriptions for system administrators. This is a reasonable rule of thumb to follow in general.

In a smaller environment, separating duties too much will not be justified and may encourage siloing within a department. Smaller environments benefit from shared knowledge and responsibilities. As the company and IT department grows, it may make sense to start separating duties more specifically.

Key areas, which often benefit from some separation of responsibilities:

Application stacks

Database

Network

Security

I would suggest creating a spreadsheet listing the key responsibilities within your department. This could be more general and identify specific areas that have more support associated with them, such as the phone system or ticket system. Have staff assigned as primary and secondary, so as that the immediate knowledge can be shared in addition to the documentation. This will clarify responsibilities and they can be moved around to prevent boredom as well as enable learning within the group. Some example categories for the responsibility matrix would be:

SLA Accountability Uptime reports Change control processes

Backups Policies Systems Database

Operating Systems Windows Small patches Large upgrades Performance tuning Linux Small patches Large upgrades Performance tuning

Monitoring Alert system Historical monitoring Web analytics

e-Mail Spam box End user box Production application relay



This list goes on and on, which will be specific to your infrastructure and the needs within your company.

I would recommend considering a skills analysis as well, asking your staff to rate their skill level on different technologies compiled into a spreadsheet. The rating is not definitive and would not affect performance reviews. This could identify potential gaps in your current skill-set, which is where focus can be for training and future hiring.