Questions to ask starting a volunteer organisation managerial position.
February 10, 2018 3:10 PM

I'm starting up a side technical managerial volunteer role in a organisation. The role involves looking after a piece of software the organisation runs. I'm looking for things that I might need to consider and discover that I haven't thought about yet.

Right now my list is:
* who are the relevant people who this relates to, and who do I answer to
* who are the previous people covering this job (it was shared between several people ad-hoc as part of other jobs)
* what current projects are happening with this software and what is the status of them
* who are the software vendor contacts, what's the contract like, and how has that relationship gone in the past
* how's training on the system been done, is it working, and who needs to be trained
* what current issues do the userbase have with the software

What else should I be asking about and looking out with this product owner kind of setup?
posted by xiw to Technology (3 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
Who else has access to it? Who are other stakeholders? Can I make changes without ruffling feathers?
posted by radioamy at 10:10 PM on February 10, 2018


probably included under vendor contacts but good to ask - is there tech support you can contact and who else can access it.
posted by oneear at 11:19 PM on February 10, 2018


- access control
- auditing changes
- keeping data current and accurate
- backups
-patches and security updates
- scheduling hw/sw upgrades
- SOPs for typical tasks
- are you the *helpdesk*? or does everyone know to call vendor help if the thing shits the bed at 3am
- someone, not necessarily you, needs a process plan for what to do when:
-- there's a catastrophic, unrecoverable failure
--an upgrade is not backwards compatible with your data
--vendor goes bust
//--------------------------------
protip: make yourself known on the user forums. make friends with a tech support guy at their helpdesk.
posted by j_curiouser at 2:07 AM on February 11, 2018


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