Those who deal with IT sense that IT Managers feel stressed. Info-Tech carried out a survey of IT Managers, which confirmed that stress is widespread. Twenty percent of respondents reported being either extremely or very stressed, an additional 45% reported that they were stressed, while 35% reported being relaxed. The interesting questions are, what contributes to the stress and what can IT Managers do to reduce it.

Organizational Challenges Are Under Control

There is much written on the significant challenges faced by IT Managers, such as demonstrating value to senior management and delivering major projects. Info-Tech’s hypothesis was that stress levels are high when managers anticipate problems in meeting these major challenges. The survey, therefore, asked respondents whether they expected problems in a number of normally challenging aspects of IT work. The responses indicate that IT Managers feel that their key challenges are, in fact, under control. None of the following major IT challenges correlated to high stress levels.

Challenge	Expectation Is Good or Excellent	Expectation Is Neutral	Expectation Is Poor
Successful delivery of IT services next quarter	74%	22%	4%
Successful delivery of IT special projects next quarter	66%	28%	6%
Successful communication of IT value to senior management	65%	27%	8%
Meeting senior management expectations	63%	29%	8%
Managing within IT budget	56%	24%	20%

Stress Comes from Unplanned-For Interruptions

Follow-up interviews with several respondents revealed one common cause of stress: the disruptive effect of unplanned events. Regardless of responsibility, respondents reported that they feel stress anticipating or experiencing events that disrupt the work they have planned or scheduled. The stress can originate from a variety of sources. The stimulus of stress is sometimes operational problems, such as security breaches or system outages. Other stressors are escalations from senior management, dealing with a myriad of competing requests, and changes to project priorities, timing or scope. When respondents frequently experienced unexpected events, they felt stressed.

Responding to interruptions is an inherent responsibility for all IT Managers. There are, however, a number of ways to reduce the frequency of interruptions or to increase the amount of time available to deal with disruptions, and, therefore, reduce stress.

Converting Random Interruptions to Regular Processes

Planned activities create less stress than the same activities when they are random and uncontrolled. IT Managers can transform common interruptions into planned and regular processes. The following are some examples:

Random Interruption	Converted to a Regular Process
Management requests for project status	Establish regular project and budget status reporting to eliminate random requests for updates. Establish Steering Committees for major projects to provide detailed communication of progress, status and outstanding issues. For more information, McLean Report subscribers can refer to the research note, “ Use the Right Metrics When Building an IT Performance Scorecard.”
Management requests for budget status	Provide a monthly forecast of expenditures; provide early warning of projected cost overruns.
Requests for system changes from various employees	Establish a change review process with a clear and standardized request method (fewer random requests), a regular review timetable, a defined method and timetable for communicating go/no-go, and published timetables for implementation of approved changes. For more information refer to the Info-Tech Advisor research note, “Keeping Change Management Simple.”
Shifts in resource scheduling from business units	Communicate that the Project Manager is responsible for dealing with the impact of externally-imposed changes.

Recommendations

There are a number of successful approaches to reducing the number and duration of interruptions to an IT Manager’s time, and, therefore, reducing associated stress:

1. Improve service quality to reduce the number of unexpected disruptions during each day. Many interruptions take the form of escalations from managers and users because of failed expectations. Others result because the manager has to get involved in a service disruption. Managers should analyze the causes of any chronic interruptions to their work, and address the root causes, one by one, starting with those that are relatively easy to repair or are a significant source of interruption. For example, managers who regularly get escalations about slow help desk responsiveness should either take steps to improve service levels or manage expectations to a level that is achievable.
2. Increase the amount of discretionary time in each day and reduce imposed time. Managers with full calendars and to-do lists have little or no capacity to deal with inevitable unexpected events. Managers who have learned techniques for reducing imposed time have higher capacity and not only feel less stress, they have more uninterrupted time to deal with issues that come up and deal with them at a higher level of quality. External time-management courses specifically directed at managers, such as William Oncken Jr.’s “Managing Management Time” program, are an excellent business and personal investment. Such programs help managers improve such skills as efficient and effective delegation, and their ability to anticipate the information needs of their management.
3. Establish processes that turn random events into planned activities. Every IT manager experiences a number of regular interruptions. Effective managers transform these to regular, predictable processes.

Bottom Line

Info-Tech Research found that sixty-six percent of IT Managers feel stressed. The research shows that the stress does not originate primarily from organizational challenges. It often comes from a failure to find enough personal time to deal with the disruptions that IT Managers invariably face. IT Managers who increase the amount of time which they control feel less stress.