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)

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