Wading in a little late, but hopefully with useful information.
I have gone through the exercise of "right sizing" a couple of IT
departments. Some with users that are also developers or technical support
teams, and others that are 100% non-technical (doctors, nurses, lawyers,
etc.). The best way that I have found to determine the right number of IT
staff to regular staff is by monitoring the service desk call volume, time
to close trouble tickets, amount of overtime, and project scheduling
estimates.
Gather all of these statistics for several weeks, and do a few "ride-alongs"
to ensure the stats are being recorded accurately. Once you have that
information, you are in a better position to discover the man-hours worked
and can make informed projections as to future needs.
It is not unusual to compare your operational overhead with others in your
industry, or in non-competitive, but similar organizations. Doing so on a
broad scale will not likely be beneficial as their are too many variables.
Hope that helps,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Rami.Prescott@frostbank.com [mailto:Rami.Prescott@frostbank.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 4:32 PM
To: security-management@securityfocus.com
Subject: IT Department Size
Would anyone know of a good place to find information on how large a system
administrator/ network engineering department should be?
The general rule of thumb I've heard is 1 system administrator/network
engineer for every 250 users. Is this generally true in practice?
We define system administrator/network engineer as someone who has 5-10
years experience in all OS and who is responsible for the operating system
and hardware.
Thank you,
Rami Prescott
IT Audit
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